Plus: TelCove unleashes higher bandwidth; Qwest rolls out more business VoIP.
FiberNet Telecom last week agreed to acquire Con Edison Communications, a subsidiary of utility Consolidated Edison, for approximately $37 million.
Con Ed Communications provides managed network services in the New York metropolitan area. FiberNet is a managed service provider with OC-192 and Gigabit Ethernet SONET rings in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. FiberNet says the Con Ed Communications deal will more than double its revenue, which was $26.6 million in 2003.
n Competitive local exchange carrier TelCove last week announced the addition of higher-bandwidth products to its fiber-optic metropolitan, intercity and wave services offerings. The new OC-192 and 10G wavelength services join previously available OC-48 and 2.5G products. TelCove also offers a variety of storage networking connections that include Fibre Channel, Enterprise Systems Connectivity, Fiber Connectivity and Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex.
TelCove, which was formerly a subsidiary of Adelphia Communications and emerged from bankruptcy protection earlier this year, serves about 50 markets in the eastern half of the country.
Qwest has announced that it is expanding its business VoIP service nationwide. Qwest OneFlex services are now available in more than 100 cities across the U.S. It had been in only 26 markets. Qwest launched OneFlex in August. Services include OneFlex Integrated Access, which lets business customers bundle their voice and data services over one Internet connection; and OneFlex Hosted VoIP, a hosted service that comprises local and long-distance voice and high-speed Internet access.
The carrier also offers another VoIP service called IP Centrex Prime. This lets enterprise customers with traditional Centrex services migrate from their PBX connections to a VoIP service while retaining the call quality and reliability of a PBX, Qwest says.
