Lightpath, Nortel launch NYC-area Metropolitan Continuity Service

Fiber Optics Weekly Update, May 13, 2005

Lightpath, the business telecommunications services division of Cablevision Systems, has launched its Metropolitan Continuity Service. According to a press release, the optical bypass private line service is especially designed to increase network availability by bypassing the city of New York.

According to the carrier, the service is optimized for enterprise customers wishing to mitigate business interruption risks, and for providers of enterprise data storage, business continuity, and disaster recovery services. The service employs Nortel's Optical Long Haul (LH) 1600 and Optical Metro 5200 platforms, transporting Ethernet and 2.5-10-Gbit wavelength-based services in a wide area ring architecture connecting Long Island, Westchester, and New Jersey. The company's Optical LH 1600 wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) equipment was selected by the carrier to deliver approximately 720Gbps (10Gbps X 72 wavelengths) of capacity on a single fiber pair. The network will interconnect to multiple regional rings using the company's Optical Metro 5200 platform.

"With new regulatory and compliance-based requirements that are driving business continuity efforts in such industries as financial services, Lightpath recognized the overwhelming need to provide customers with an innovative option to avoid service interruptions," explained Brian Fabiano, senior vice president of network services for Lightpath. "As a result, Lightpath constructed a fully diverse network path, from Long Island to New Jersey, that ensures availability for customers' critical business applications by circumventing typical New York City locations that represent significant single points of failure in most carriers' networks."

The carrier says the continuity service network was constructed with the goal of bypassing the New York fiber corridor's large, traditional switching centers in Manhattan. According to the carrier, the network provides stable and resilient end-to-end connectivity from Bethpage, New York, to Parsippany, New Jersey, crossing under Long Island Sound from Roslyn to Mamaroneck, and crossing the Hudson River approximately 70 miles north of New York City.

"We are seeing cable operators aggressively pursuing business customers throughout the country by delivering highly differentiated services from what traditional telecom service providers have been offering," observed Lindsay Schroth, senior analyst at the Yankee Group's broadband access technologies advisory service. "Nowhere is this more evident than in Lightpath's move to develop a totally unique--and difficult to replicate--optical network path for business continuity in the New York metropolitan area, that totally bypasses the island of Manhattan."