FEBRUARY 5, 2008 -- The Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative (search for MBC) says it has dramatically expanded the backbone capacity of the Southside Virginia Regional Backbone Network, with additional funding from the Virginia Tobacco Commission and expansions to its Infinera (search for Infinera) regional network. According to MBC, the addition of the Infinera DTN system to MBC's regional network increased the network's operational capacity tenfold to 100 Gbits/sec, ensuring that MBC will be able to meet the high-bandwidth wholesale optical transport demands of major telecom carriers and service providers that need access to new data centers in the Southside Virginia region.
"Due to the recent growth of data centers and new companies locating in Southside Virginia, it was necessary for us to increase our capacity to provide on-net wholesale multi-gigabit connections from our mostly rural region to Tier I data center hubs like the Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia, Level(3) Gateways in Virginia and North Carolina, and the TelX facility in Atlanta, Georgia," reports MBC general Manager Tad Deriso. "Content providers, corporate data centers, and e-commerce companies looking for secure, affordable collocation space with unlimited bandwidth now have an exceptional resource in Southside Virginia."
MBC says it is providing multi-gigabit wholesale optical transport at a new data center in the Southside area for a Fortune 100 company, which confirms the competitive advantage Southside Virginia enjoys in attracting technology companies to this region.
The Southside Virginia region possesses low taxes, affordable power, a talented workforce, a highly advanced telecom infrastructure, and proximity to large corporate and government users in the northern Virginia/Washington D.C. corridor and the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, claim MBC representatives. The addition of affordable and rapidly scalable broadband connectivity from MBC has helped stimulate new interest in the region from companies looking to expand their presence in Virginia. For the second year in a row, Virginia was ranked as "The #1 State for Business" by CNBC and Forbes.com magazine.
Infinera first announced its relationship with MBC in January 2007, and has since augmented the MBC network with additional capacity, confirming the success of MBC's business model as a public/private service provider supporting economic growth by providing wholesale connectivity to rural Virginia. Infinera CEO Jagdeep Singh says he is delighted to see Infinera's Digital Optical Networking solutions supporting economic growth in rural Virginia.
"Infinera's Bandwidth Virtualization, based on large-scale photonic integration, has enabled MBC to put in place a regional network that can flexibly and cost-effectively support the wholesale connectivity needs of carriers, business, local community, and government sector customers all on the same infrastructure," he notes. "I'm thrilled to see the Infinera solution playing a role in helping MBC bring advanced services and economic growth to Southside Virginia."
Infinera describes its DTN as a Digital ROADM for long-haul and metro core networks, combining high-capacity DWDM transport, integrated digital bandwidth management, and GMPLS-powered service intelligence in a single platform.
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