FiberCity Networks Deploys Fiber Last-Mile Network
The company already has agreements with building owners to permit the deployment of its network into almost 200 buildings in major cities throughout North America, totaling approximately 100 million square feet. The company continues to actively negotiate access agreements with additional building owners and expects to substantially increase the number of buildings and square footage on the network.
FiberCity Networks, which began operations earlier this year, delivers its services through a proprietary metropolitan-area, broadband fiber-optic network that delivers a rate of 4.8 billion bits per second of private, dedicated bandwidth to each building. This bandwidth is the equivalent of connecting each building with over 3,100 T-1 digital business lines.
This bandwidth continues on to the customers with one or two billion-bit-per second fiber optic local loops delivered directly into their offices. Each of these connections is the equivalent of over 650 T-1 digital lines.
FiberCity Networks builds its metropolitan area networks on top of fiber-optic infrastructure that it leases under long-term contracts primarily from Metromedia Fiber Network Inc. [MFNX]. The company has signed an initial agreement for access to fiber-optic connectivity to 300 buildings throughout the United States and Europe.
"By leasing fiber from our optical network, FiberCity will gain access to 300 buildings, as well as the ability to deliver leading-edge business data and multimedia services at up to 4.8 gigabits per second in each of these buildings," said Nick Tanzi, president and chief operating officer of Metromedia Fiber Network.
FiberCity Networks' services are delivered to customers directly from its central offices and data center in Newark, N.J. A range of Internet access services are offered including 100-megabit-per-second, ultra-high-speed access for Internet browsing with a price of $795 per month.
Private network application services include local area network (LAN) speed private networking for customers between their metropolitan and national offices and managed data centers; storage-area networking comprising multi-terabyte RAID 5 data warehousing, managed optical data archiving and disaster recovery; hosted servers for database mirroring, thin-client applications and Web services, all with LAN-speed access; streaming and multicast IP video services including managed video servers and distribution of TV-quality video content such as multicast commercial TV programming; and managed carrier-class enterprise firewall and security services.
FiberCity Networks also provides legacy SONET T-1, T-3 and OC-3 local-loop services with dozens of local loops immediately available in each building for business customers as well as on a wholesale basis to competitive exchange carriers.
FiberCity Networks was started in April 1998 and completed its first round of venture capital financing in January 2000. Investors include Samsung America Ventures, several private investors, and a partnership managed by New York investment firm Sands Brothers made up of corporate and individual investors from technology and real estate concerns.
Edited by Evan Bass
Managing Editor, Fiber Optics Online