Progress Telecom develops customer Gigabit Ethernet system for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina
Progress Telecom today announced the completion and delivery of a dedicated enterprise solution providing both Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel services to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC). The customized solution provides increased bandwidth and data storage connectivity between the major health care company's data center, Customer Service Center, and corporate headquarters in the Triangle area of North Carolina.
"BCBSNC required an efficient, reliable, and secure data network to deliver and manage high-quality services to its customers," explains Ron Mudry, Progress Telecom's president and chief executive officer. "Our custom solution was driven by these critical needs. Our dense metro network in Raleigh/Durham allowed us to quickly deliver the custom solution, exceeding BCBSNC's aggressive implementation schedule."
Progress Telecom owns fiber-optic routes throughout the eastern United States. Its Raleigh/Durham metro area fiber routes pass in close proximity to the health insurer's target locations.
Progress Telecom's Optical Wavelength Service provides full-rate Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet over a single fiber, positioning high-end enterprise customers for easy and quick access to new services, as well as to additional network channels, say company representatives. New locations also can be added without disrupting services to existing customers. The service is powered by CIENA's ONLINE Metro Multiservice DWDM Transport Platform, which enables flexible WDM deployment of full-rate protected services, including Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, ESCON, FICON, SONET OC-192, OC-48, OC-12, OC-3, and corresponding SDH services.
To complement its core business of providing wholesale broadband services, Progress Telecom is moving aggressively in 2003 to develop and provide customized network solutions to high-end enterprises. The solution for BCBSNC is the first such provision in the health care sector. Other solutions to meet specific needs are planned for banking, government, insurance, and education enterprises.