Dave Rusin, President and CEO of American Fiber Systems talks about his company at this summer's Voice Peering Forum.

FiberLight, LLC a provider of metro optical transport services, has recently partnered with BandCon, a leading content delivery provider, to extend the BandCon Content Delivery System to the South Florida market.

BandCon will further expand its national footprint when it deploys FiberLight’s LightSource suite, extending its Miami data center to Ft. Lauderdale. FiberLight is in the perfect position to assist BandCon with this endeavor as it offers a 287-mile diverse metro ring infrastructure extending from the city of North Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton and Ft. Lauderdale to Miami’s downtown business district.  Through this partnership, BandCon will be able to take advantage of FiberLight’s real-time data transfer capability, 5 9s reliability and their 24 hour monitoring system with reduced downtime.

It has become imperative that content providers provide real-time solutions for the rapid transfer and download of media rich content. By selecting FiberLight as their optical transport provider, BandCon will be able to offer their customers a cost-effective solution that supports their needs for speed and flexibility.

About FiberLight
FiberLight provides metro optical transport services including Ethernet, Wavelengths, IP, SONET and Dark Fiber within Atlanta, Washington DC, Northern Virginia, Baltimore, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Clearwater, Tampa, St. Petersburg, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, and Miami. Leveraging over 500,000 miles of metro fiber, the most exacting customers in the industry including telecom carriers, international carriers, government, large enterprise, content providers, and web centric businesses all rely on FiberLight to transport mission critical and delay sensitive data.

NEF designs solutions based on your needs and specifications using a variety of connectivity options. Creating custom dark fiber networks is one of the strategies NEF employs to bring you the best communications network at the most competitive price. Contact NEF today for more information.

Hosted Solutions, a premier managed services and data center provider has signed a deal with Britax Child Safety, Inc., a leading child seat manufacturer.
Britax is world renowned for developing cars seats that greatly improve child safety. In today’s modern age of the Internet, the company has shown understanding that the Internet is the number one destination for a family researching the important decision of which child seat to buy.

With a large web presence, Britax chose Hosted Solutions as its hosting provider because Hosted Solutions will be able to globally connect the company’s website which now spans North America, Europe and Australia. Hosted Solutions is officially contracted to handle dedicated services, bandwidth, firewall, servers, licenses, backups and full management for all Britax web properties.

Their international presence requires that Britx has uninterrupted service on their website at all times. Hosted Solutions has the resources to make this happen, while also keeping the site secure around the clock.

About Hosted Solutions
Hosted Solutions’ high quality Data Center and Managed Hosting services maintain and protect customers’ mission-critical IT systems and applications, enabling them to reduce operating costs, lower the risk of downtime, focus on core competencies, and achieve their top business objectives. The company operates SAS 70 Type II Certified facilities in Boston MA, Charlotte NC, Raleigh NC, and Cary NC providing best-of-breed data center operations with hardened physical infrastructure, the highest level of security, and a complete managed services portfolio.

Keep your applications running fast and keep your costs low. Contact NEF to learn how we can help you find a robust and reliable network that fits your needs. Whether it is a dark fiber network or lit service solutions, we’ll help you find the best price on the right connectivity options for your business.

Those of you in the motion picture and television industry will be thrilled to learn that AboveNet, Inc., a leading provider of fiber optical connectivity solutions, has launched jabNET, a new high-bandwidth service that quickly transfers visually rich content such as special effects between diverse geographical locations.

Thanks to AboveNet’s jabNET, industry professionals will experience a faster movie and TV production process that keeps pace with the fast-changing demands of the industry.  With jabNET there is potential to save weeks of financial charges as elements no longer need to wait to be copied and packed on hard drives and sent via courier from location to location. Now industry professionals can get the files in only a few clicks. Additionally, rather than looking at tiny images that were once sent over the web, images can now be viewed in high-definition on large screens.

About AboveNet
AboveNet provides fiber services for business and carriers and says its private optical network delivers services in and among 14 top U.S. metro markets and London.

NEF designs solutions based on your needs and specifications using a variety of connectivity options. Creating custom dark fiber networks is one of the strategies NEF employs to bring you the best communications network at the most competitive price. Contact NEF today for more information.

NEF is proud to announce a new offering in Dallas. A wholly owned conduit system in the central business district — includes building entrances. Check out the map below and contact NEF today for additional information on the new fiber routes available in Dallas.

Earlier this year, Southern California Edison, California’s largest electricity utility, announced plans to create the state’s largest single solar photovoltaic installation. The plans call for a massive 250 megawatts of advanced photovoltaic generating technology to be placed on 65 million square feet of Southern California commercial building roofs – enough power to serve around 162,000 homes.

The company has recently announced that the first of its major commercial rooftop solar installations is now complete and powering homes in Fontana, California. The specs for this Fontana rooftop include 600,000 square feet of rooftop space with 33,700 advanced thin-film solar panels, making it the largest single solar photovoltaic project in California. It is expected to create enough power to meet the needs of approximately 1,300 homes.

This Fontana rooftops accounts for only a portion of Southern California Edison’s total project which expects to include two square miles of existing commercial roofs with 250 million watts of peak generating capacity.

Southern California Edison decided to take on this project once solar technology was advanced enough to reduce the cost of installed photovoltaic generation to about half of current similar installations. Southern California Edison is also pursuing other sources of renewable energy as seen earlier this year when they announced plans to build the largest wind farm in the US.

NEF designs solutions based on your needs and specifications using a variety of connectivity options. Creating custom dark fiber networks is one of the strategies NEF employs to bring you the best communications network at the most competitive price. Contact NEF today for more information.

The U.S. Broadband Coalition has reached out to President-Elect Barack Obama and the 111th Congress asking that they make the execution of a comprehensive broadband strategy a national priory in 2009.

The U.S. Broadband Coalition includes organizations such as the FTTH Council, American Cable Association (ACA), the Connected Nation and a number of other carriers and equipment service suppliers.  Together, they have put together a “call to action” which outlines initial goals for a national plan to bridge the digital divide and harness the potential of broadband enabled communications for businesses, schools and individuals.

The coalition argues that broadband access is now a necessity for every American. It further states that broadband-enabled Internet connectivity has changed the way the world communicates, learns and does business. Unfortunately, the United States currently lags far behind other countries in broadband advancement, a ranking that the country can no longer afford to keep. The U.S. Broadband Coalition hopes that President-Elect Barack Obama agrees that 2009 should mark the beginning of the end for broadband disparity for individuals throughout the country, particularly in underserved communities.

Goals put forth to the President-Elect and the 111th Congress include:

• Every American home, business, and public and private institution should have access to affordable high speed broadband connections to the Internet.

• Access to the Internet should, to the maximum feasible extent, be open to all users, service providers, content providers, and application providers.

• Network operators must have the right to manage their networks responsibly, pursuant to clear and workable guidelines and standards.

• The Internet and broadband marketplace should be as competitive as reasonably possible.

• U.S. broadband networks should provide Americans with the network performance, capacity, and connections they need to compete successfully in the global marketplace.

Keep your applications running fast and keep your costs low. Contact NEF to learn how we can help you find a robust and reliable network that fits your needs. Whether it is a dark fiber network or lit service solutions, we’ll help you find the best price on the right connectivity options for your business.

According to a new report from Infonetics Research, worldwide service providers are on track to spend $275 billion on capital expenditures in 2008. This is up 10.5% from 2007 and can be accredited to currency appreciation against the U.S. dollar.

The report titled, “Service Provider Capex, Opex, ARPU, and Subscribers,” was updated to reflect world events and suggests that because of recent news, 2009 can expect to see a capex decrease of approximately 2% among service providers worldwide.

These changes are different from what Infonetics originally projected in 2006. They forecasted the spending plateau to occur in 2009, but the current global turmoil has sped up the process, making it occur a year earlier in 2008.

While many industries are being especially hard hit during this economic downfall, most service providers are taking it easy because they have clean balance sheets and are entering the global crisis on solid financial ground. This financial stability can be attributed to the fact that a lot of these companies went through their correction when the Internet/telecom bubble burst, resulting in deep double-digit capex cuts.

Other highlights from the report include the following:

• Wireless services will help keep service providers' revenue afloat and prevent telecom from a major slump.
• Worldwide service provider revenue is on track to reach $1.63 trillion in 2008, up 9.5% from 2007, due in large part to currency appreciation, with the rest coming from wireless.
• The world's 10 largest service providers (ranked by 2007 revenue) are AT&T, Verizon, NTT, Deutsche Telekom, France Télécom, Vodafone, Telefónica, China Mobile, BT, and Sprint.
  

NEF designs solutions based on your needs and specifications using a variety of connectivity options. Creating custom dark fiber networks is one of the strategies NEF employs to bring you the best communications network at the most competitive price. Contact NEF today for more information.

NEF Partner, WBS Connect is a privately-held provider of worldwide technology services. The company leverages multi-gigabit commitments with IP transit carriers to offer direct connections in the United States, Europe and Asia. WBS Connect also offers colocation, storage, and expert managed network services. WBS Connect has a presence in carrier neutral data centers in Amsterdam, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, NYC, Seattle, and Toronto. Following is a case study in which WBS Connect was able to provide a multiple carrier, BGP enabled, high availability solution to Meru Networks, a developer and marketer of wireless infrastructure solutions that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise.

Overview
Meru Networks develops and markets wireless infrastructure solutions that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise. Its industry-leading innovations deliver pervasive, wireless service fidelity for business-critical applications to major Fortune 500 enterprises, universities, healthcare organizations and local, state and federal government agencies. Meru's award-winning Air Traffic Control technology brings the benefits of the cellular world to the wireless LAN environment, and its WLAN System is the only solution on the market that delivers predictable bandwidth and over-the-air quality of service with the reliability, scalability and security necessary to deliver converged voice and data services over a single WLAN infrastructure.

Challenge
Meru Networks needed a partner that could provide a multiple carrier, BGP enabled, High Availability Solution to support their mission critical Data, voice and Video traffic.

Solution
WBS Connect was able to assist Meru Networks in getting their own ASN number through ARIN. WBS Connect then architected a BGP-enabled, high availability, networking solution utilizing the ATT and XO Communications IP backbones. For the managed hardware solution, an N+1 Routing/Switching infrastructure powered by Juniper Networks was deployed. This solution provides Meru Networks with a fully redundant, high availability network topology that supports their mission critical Data, Voice and Video traffic. By running BGP with ATT and XO, Meru is not dependant on a single carrier for IP backbone connectivity. The N+1 hardware solution also allows for a router to completely fail and not affect Meru Network’s traffic.

Benefits Summary
• WBS Connect acts as a single point of contact for network connectivity, managed services, hardware, and advanced network consulting. WBS Connect takes care of IP backbone services, including providing one, simplified monthly bill.
• Meru benefits from WBS Connect’s multiple carrier relationships, providing diversity and reducing the risk of network down time. Additionally, instead of having to maintain relationships and contracts with each individual carrier, Meru just has one contract with WBS Connect.
• Meru IT has built a strong relationship with WBS Connect’s engineering staff. Meru receives unbiased consultation and guidance whenever needed.

Get the benefits of NEF’s network expertise with the expanse offered by WBS Connect. Contact NEF today to learn more.

With help from AboveNet, Switch and Data will now be able to provide its new North Bergen, NJ data center customers with a host of connectivity solutions that range from simple IP transit and Ethernet metro connectivity to high-bandwidth, low latency solutions.

AboveNet, a leading provider of fiber optic connectivity solutions for business and carriers, will contribute private secure communications with virtually unlimited capacity and flexibility, enabling Switch and Data customers to solve critical issues, including costs containment, security and reliability.

AboveNet has also invested heavily in fiber optic connectivity in and between data center facilities to support customer IT virtualization plans. These services allow a company to deploy infrastructure at a new high-capacity site, like Switch and Data's 163,000 gross square foot North Bergen site, and connect it back to existing facilities to create one virtual infrastructure, with the space and power to support IT infrastructure growth. 

The New York metro area traditionally experiences high customer demand for data center and Internet exchange service. With limited space and power available to support growth, the collaboration between AboveNet and Switch and Data is exciting for all. AboveNet’s investment in Switch and Data’s data centers is proof that both companies are truly vested in the New York metro area’s need for data center space in and interconnection services.

About AboveNet, Inc.
AboveNet provides fiber optic connectivity solutions for business and carriers. Its private optical network delivers key network and IP services in and among 14 top U.S. metro markets and London, UK. Its network is widely used in demanding markets such as financial services, media, health care, retail and government.

Get the speed you need with the reliability you want. NEF can connect you with the fastest, more robust networks around. Contact us to learn more about low latency networks.

In any business, tough economic times call for tough decisions. In the case of IT, many companies are asking IT professionals to increase efficiency and speed with less money. However, as your network needs and the number of technological devices and applications grow, you'll require more bandwidth than ever before. For IT departments, achieving the desired objectives with lower budgets has proven to be extremely difficult and some creativity is required to achieve the objectives.

The good news is that by working with a network broker like NEF, IT professionals can use the following five tactics for reducing costs while achieving the desired results.

Look at replacing the LEC with an alternative provider
In many cases there are dozens of provider options above and beyond the local exchange carrier (LEC). NEF representatives know which carriers have fiber near-net and which will provide options to increase bandwidth for a lower cost than the LEC, making replacing the LEC with an alternative fiber provider an easy decision.

Leverage dark fiber and inexpensive hardware for metro connections
By leveraging dark fiber and managing the connections in house, enterprise customers with high bandwidth needs within a metropolitan area can easily get the bandwidth they need without additional monthly operating costs. Because the optical gear required to light dark fiber has become very easy to use, more and more companies are sourcing management in-house, rather than outsourcing it.

Renegotiate IP contracts- rates are at all time lows
Remember that in a tough economy all businesses are struggling, even providers. This makes for a great time to negotiate the best rates as carriers are trying their best to attract customers and finish out the year with strong revenue numbers. In fact, the pricing landscape for IP services has changed radically in the last 12 months. There are now several high quality national providers that will provide IP for under $10 per meg with a commitment of 100 meg.

Provide your own loop to data centers and IP PoPs
If IT professionals determine that their IP connections are from a national provider, they should take a look at their contract to determine port cost (the cost of the IP) and loop cost (charge for local loop access to your location). In many cases, IT professionals will learn that their national provider used the LEC for the loop, which is rarely the least expensive option.

Most carriers will also mark up the cost of the local loop to cover administrative costs.  Getting some competitive quotes from alternative access providers determines if providing one’s own loop can save money. This is known as customer provided access and in many cases can save IT professionals up to 30% on their total IP charges.  If terminated in a carrier hotel it also provides the ability to run multiple providers over a single local access loop with simple cross connects.

Optimize your network to combine circuits onto one common platform
It’s important for IT professionals to audit their network to make sure they are not being billed for inactive circuits. By looking for areas where circuits can be consolidated onto one platform and taking notes on expiration dates, IT professionals can ask their provider for a new contract with reduced rates.

Keep your applications running fast and keep your costs low. Contact NEF to learn how we can help you find a robust and reliable network that fits your needs. Whether it is a dark fiber network or lit service solutions, we’ll help you find the best price on the right connectivity options for your business.

Need to find multiple carriers in your region? Want a map with all lit buildings and data centers, including their amenities and features? Think that it would be ideal to have a report outlining pricing on all available network providers? Now you can get it all. NEF, one of the nation’s top telecommunications brokerage firms, has created easy and assessable solutions by offering multiple reports that provide extensive information and detail on available carriers, lit buildings, data centers, networks and more.

NEF utilizes a collaborative methodology for delivering customized reports and recommendations to customers. By using a step by step process to ensure thorough and current data, maps and analysis, customers receive customized map views with proprietary tools noting points of interest and provider neutral recommendations for each solution.

NEF will work with a customer’s technical requirements, latency and redundancy requirements, budgets restraints and timelines to create a comprehensive report which details strategy recommendations for a total network and data center solution.

NEF report offerings include, but are not limited to:

FiberLocator – Get access to a database of over 85,000 lit buildings and over 1,000 data center locations, maps, carriers, services and quotes.

FiberLocator Enhanced – Receive everything you would get with FiberLocator, plus an interactive web conference session with NEF consultants enabling customer Q&A, reviews of maps and zoom views of specific locations.

Data Center Locator – Get data center locations represented on maps, including physical addresses and facility amenities and features.

BuildingLocator – Receive a list of lit buildings sorted by carrier along with a comprehensive write up of available services.

Network Feasibility – This report offers pricing of available providers plus online reviews of solutions in FiberLocator.

Get the speed you need with the reliability you want. NEF can connect you with the fastest, more robust networks around. Contact us to learn more about low latency networks.