FRAMINGHAM (12/03/2003) - Lightpath, a New York-area CLEC, is deploying DWDM gear from Nortel Networks Corp. as the foundation for new service provisioning across its fiber-optic network.
The Cablevision Systems Corp. subsidiary and fifth largest facilities-based LEC in New York State is using Nortel's OPTera 5200 system to evolve its existing SONET backbone into a DWDM core that can deliver multipoint metro Ethernet, storage-area networking and managed router services. Lightpath currently offers point-to-point Ethernet and managed VPN services on its 110,000 fiber-mile network, company officials say.
The network upgrade will initially support 32 protected OC-48 lambdas, and OC-192 wavelengths next year, says Brian Fabiano, senior vice president of network services for Lightpath. Lightpath's Optical Network is currently comprised of 419 SONET rings.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Lightpath had 2002 revenue of US$160 million and a capital expense budget of $120 million. The CLEC provisions more than 140,000 access lines and 18,000 Internet circuits to over 4,000 business subscribers.
Separately, Nortel unveiled a product for cable operators targeting schools, local businesses and other enterprises.
The OPTera Metro 5000 CWDM Enclosure is designed to delivering Gigabit Ethernet, storage connectivity, and other optical broadband services to customer premises. The system can aggregate multiple private CWDM optical channels from various customer premises over a single fiber pair.
The CWDM Enclosure can also be placed in basements of multi-tenant buildings to provide private, multi-protocol, optical wavelength services, Nortel says.
Pricing and availability of the product was not disclosed.