Metro Bytes: Level 3, FirstLight, Windstream, UPN, Ekinops

Here’s some quick catch-up from out in the metro:

Level has finished off a network expansion in my home turf up in northern New Jersey. They’ve added some 49 miles to their already extensive reach, adding route diversity and capacity for the region. With the tw telecom integration hopefully past its most difficult hurdles, 2016 looks like a year of organic opportunity for Level 3 — unless of course it buys Colt or something.

A few hundred miles north by northeast, FirstLight Fiber added a new and rather cuddly enterprise customers. They are supplying fiber-based 100Mbps connectivity to the Shelburne headquarters of The Vermont Teddy Bear Co. With the holiday shopping season now in full swing and a business heavily dependent on internet and phone sales, the extra bandwidth will definitely come in handy.

In the southwest, Windstream is taking its VoIP and UC solutions into a few new markets. They are now selling these and a variety of other managed services products to enterprises in the four West Texas markets of Abilene, Amarillo, Lubbock, and Midland-Odessa. It’s good to see Windstream starting to take full advantage of the former McLeodUSA assets it acquired in the PAETEC deal.

Unite Private Networks has another enterprise win in the Midwest. UPN is providing fiber connections to multiple locations for Farmers Cooperative. Farmers Cooperative has over 70 locations around the state and needed faster, more reliable, and more redundant connectivity.  UPN has been aggressively building organically in Iowa, Colorado, and Texas as well.

And Ekinops has been busy in Arkansas. South Arkansas Telephone Company has launched an optical network based on Ekinops gear that gives them 10G capabilities now with 100G on tap for future upgrades. SATCO’s network spans 300 miles from Hope to Monticello across the southern Tier of the state.

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Categories: Metro fiber · Telecom Equipment · Unified Communications