Metromedia serves up high-speed 'Net plan

Optical infrastructure provider Metromedia Fiber Network has begun targeting businesses with very high Internet bandwidth demands through the launch of a Gigabit Ethernet Internet service.

Called MFN Metro Gig-E, the offering is aimed at customers requiring at least a DS-3 connection to the Internet, customers who need to burst their bandwidth with minimal latency and those with high-capacity Internet needs who are searching for a second provider.

Customers subscribing to the service will be connected directly to MFN's national IP network through a fiber connection.

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Optical infrastructure provider Metromedia Fiber Network has begun targeting businesses with very high Internet bandwidth demands through the launch of a Gigabit Ethernet Internet service.

Called MFN Metro Gig-E, the offering is aimed at customers requiring at least a DS-3 connection to the Internet, customers who need to burst their bandwidth with minimal latency and those with high-capacity Internet needs who are searching for a second provider.

Customers subscribing to the service will be connected directly to MFN's national IP network through a fiber connection.

"We're taking the metro assets MFN has in dark fiber and leveraging those assets to make connections directly to our IP backbone," says Joe Ramsey, director of product marketing.

Customers must be connected to an MFN metropolitan network to subscribe to the service. If they aren't connected already, they have to pay a one-time fee to build a fiber lateral to their premises.

MFN Metro Gig-E is available in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The MFN Metro Gig-E service starts at $5,000 per month for 100M bit/sec access. Bursting above 100M bit/sec access will be billed on an as-used basis. Additional bandwidth is priced based on volume commitments.

Ramsey says MFN's main competition will be DS-3 lines from traditional telecom providers.

Companies such as Cogent Communications, which offers 100M bit/sec Internet connections to customers in multitenant buildings, won't be competitors because they go after smaller companies, he says.

Metromedia, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last May, still is working on a reorganization plan.

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