Trading Desk: Briefs

Posted: 1/2002

Trading Desk

News Briefs

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In the first of a series of telecom impact studies, “Bandwidth Exchanges: From Bulletin Boards to Tradable Commodity Amid the Telecom Turmoil,” Lemay-Yates Associates Inc. notes a dramatic expansion of market activity in bandwidth trading in the last two years, with at least 1,000 bandwidth trades per quarter. However, LYA says carrier involvement will continue to be unclear due to issues of standardized contracts and products, and the neutrality of bandwidth exchanges. Metro providers are at the forefront, it says.

The report notes the emergence of risk management instruments, such as forward contracts, is changing how bandwidth is provisioned and how quality of service is measured. It also cites potential synergies with energy exchanges and brokers.

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Pooling point provider LighTrade Inc. will provide interconnection services for optical metro provider OnFiber Communications Inc. in Seattle and Philadelphia, with plans for expansion. LighTrade customers will have access to OnFiber’s local access grids and “HomeRun Fiber” architecture, which offer SONET, Gigabit Ethernet and optical wavelength services to enterprise locations and other service provider locations.

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North American carrier-neutral collocation facilities for the first time average larger than their European counterparts, according to the sixth quarterly rack report from Band-X Ltd. The latest survey shows U.S. facilities offered on the exchange average 3,276 square meters, compared to 2,994 square meters in Europe. The reasons for this change include industry consolidation in Europe, while stateside a number of very large sites have started using Band-X as a collocation marketing channel for the first time, says the company.

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Research group TeleGeography Inc.’s reports, in “Packet Geography 2002,” a study on international Internet infrastructure that almost 150 Gbps of region-to-region bandwidth connect New York City to about two-thirds of all interregional Internet capacity worldwide, making it the top-ranked Internet hub. New York has direct connections into 71 other countries, 10 more than second-ranked London, with about 85Gbps of region-to-region bandwidth.

Amsterdam, Paris and San Francisco follow New York and London in the rankings. Coast-to-coast U.S. routes are the most common way to haul traffic between Asia and Europe, making the United States a key staging ground for the rest of the world’s Internet. Miami has more Internet capacity into Latin American countries than any Latin American city, making it that region’s absentee Internet infrastructure capital.