* Cable company Time Warner Telecom provides 10,000 Ethernet service ports
Time Warner Telecom this week said it has installed more than 10,000 Ethernet service ports to enterprise customers.
The connections are being delivered over the company’s national backbone and metro fiber-optic network. Time Warner Telecom claims that it has connected more enterprise buildings with fiber than any other competitive carrier in the country.
Metro Ethernet is a very hot topic right now, as Ethernet continues to push well beyond its traditional LAN boundaries. And efforts like that of Time Warner Telecom and other cable companies are part of the reason why.
The company says its edge is in “product innovation” – that is, the provider is able to be flexible in the services it offers to customers, “to match the architecture and technology with the right application.” The high speed of an Ethernet service can support storage networks, faster financial transactions and fast delivery of medical images, Time Warner Telecom says.
Time Warner Telecom says that half of the Ethernet ports it offers to enterprises are at speeds ranging from 100Mbps to 10Gbps.
Coincidentally, Cisco CEO John Chambers last week was beating the drum on increasing broadband speeds in the United States. In a talk at the Networkers conference last week, Chambers said that the U.S. definition of broadband needs to start at 100Mbps, rather than at kilobits per second.
Time Warner Telecom offers local Ethernet services, as well as a city-to-city Ethernet service using VPLS technology. Last year, the company added copper facilities to go after branch offices. Next up on the company’s list: convergence. The company says it plans to add VoIP and MPLS VPNs to the intranet and Internet connectivity it offers today.
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