Business News - MFN to Create First Premises-to-Premises Optical Internet Infrastructure

Posted: 04/2000

MFN to Create First Premises-to-Premises
Optical Internet Infrastructure

Metromedia Fiber Network, Inc.
(MFN, www.mmfn.com) and its subsidiary AboveNet Communications
Inc.(www.above.net) are implementing a $1.4 billion broadband infrastructure expansion that will create the largest customer premises-to-customer premises, purely optical, IP network in North America and Europe.

“With our own end-to-end fiber network connecting AboveNet facilities to more than 67 cities internationally, we can avoid traditional telco delays and respond to customers’ expansion needs immediately,” says David Rand, chief technical officer of MFN and AboveNet.

The expansion will light nearly 29,000 route miles of long-haul fiber in North America and Europe, with up to multiterabit-per-second capacity.

According to the company, the new, purely optical Internet infrastructure will be free from the competing demands of voice traffic common in telecommunications networks. It also will offer capacity that is hundreds of times greater than the bandwidth available on the Internet today.

The network seamlessly will connect all AboveNet facilities, including its three joint venture operations in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom, with AboveNet’s East Coast and West Coast hubs in Vienna, Va., and San Jose, Calif.

The expansion includes 14 new AboveNet Internet Service Exchange (ISX) facilities, which offer collocation and Internet connectivity for content providers, ISPs and application service providers within North America and Europe.

It also will add in excess of 1 million square feet of collocation space to AboveNet’s hubs of operation internationally.

Each expansion segment, which is already under way, will be implemented at 40gbps capacity. The expansion is scheduled to be completed within the next 12 to 18 months.

The first nine AboveNet facilities are expected to open in 2000, with the remaining five to open in early 2001.