OnFiber launches ‘alternative access’ service

OnFiber today announced the launch of a new access service that uses fiber to bridge the gap between enterprises and alternative telecom providers such as interexchange carriers and competitive carriers.

“It’s a complete bypass to that legacy Bell infrastructure, not having to hit a central office,” said Brad Cheedle, OnFiber’s vice president of marketing and sales.

OnFiber is offering AdaptiveLink to customers within 500 feet of its existing network, estimating roughly 2,000 businesses to fall within that footprint in each of AdaptiveLink’s two initial markets, San Francisco and Washington D.C. OnFiber launched the service Monday in those two cities with plans to introduce it in 15 more top-tier markets by the end of the year.

Whereas OnFiber’s pre-existing service, AdaptiveBuild, linked customer sites to one another, AdaptiveLink will link sites to alternative carriers in several ways: as wavelengths in speeds of 1.2 Gb/s, 1.5 Gb/s, 2.5 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s, as Ethernet links from 10 Mb/s to 1 Gb/s and as Sonet pipes OC-3, OC-12, OC-48 and OC-192.

Though carriers such as AT&T and MCI also have fiber access to some of OnFiber’s customers, there are plenty of customers that those networks either can’t reach at all or can only reach with existing legacy infrastructure such as T-1s or DS-3s, Cheedle said, creating an opportunity for OnFiber to connect those carriers to customers with fiber.

“And face it, these guys are about to go through megamergers that could defocus [their access network deployment],” Cheedle said.

Before the year is over, OnFiber plans to bring the new service to Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento and Seattle.