Sprint (NYSE: S) has introduced a new line of Ethernet wavelength services supporting 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GigE), 40GigE and 100GigE speeds under its new Ethernet Wave Service line.
Mike McRoberts, director of product management and development for Sprint, said in an interview with FierceTelecom that the new services are an outgrowth of the capabilities the company has built out to support its own internal network needs.
"As we foreshadowed last week with our trial and our production launch, we have followed through in parallel with all of that and launched our 10 Gig, 40 Gig and 100 Gig wave service in the U.S.," he said. "All of the development is done and we are ready to sell, take orders and implement the new service to address customer's needs for much higher bandwidth services."
Offered as a point-to-point dedicated connection, the service includes 24/7 network monitoring and flat-rate pricing. Currently available in 88 U.S. markets, the service is expected to expand into additional markets throughout next year.
Sprint will offer the service to businesses and as a wholesale offering to other service providers to support a host of new applications including storage area networks, data center connectivity, existing and emerging hosted and cloud services, and the transmission of heavy-bandwidth data files like financial data and medical images.
Businesses can also use the services for other applications such as business continuity, record archiving and database sharing and replication.
"The market opportunity is with anyone that needs to connect their large data centers and for data center operations," McRoberts said. "Our wholesale carrier customers also that have gaps in their backbone, we can supplement and provide services for them and content customers could be a candidate for it."
McRoberts added that the company is seeing a lot of inquiries and requests for price quotes for the product.
While it was a bit late to the Ethernet services game, Sprint has been making progress in building out the service to more U.S. and international locations over the past year.
This new service comes as the IXC is in the process of upgrading its optical network backbone with Ciena's 6500 platform to support its Network Vision initiative that will serve both its wireline and wireless networks. The service provider deployed a 100G circuit over a 1,304-mile span in the United States and recently completed a live 400G trial.
For more:
- see the release
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