Industry connects on interconnection

NEW YORK—The 2007 cb^x, or Customer Business Exchange, Hosted by the interconnection facility operator tel^x, brought together more than a thousand people and hundreds of communications and content companies in New York City’s financial district last week, all of them focused on how interconnection with one another fits into their strategies.

“This is an opportunity for global network operators—metro, long-haul, IPSs, wireless—to come together face-to-face and make deals that extend their reach on a global basis,” said Eric Shepcaro, CEO of tel^x. “This kind of function, and the fact that everything we provide is based on a physical connection, is also appealing to the media and entertainment sectors—the companies that want to get the content to the eyeballs.”

The cb^x event mirrored tel^x’s interconnection strategy by providing a neutral meeting place at which carriers, content providers and companies of all stripes could interact and conduct business. It also generated a number of interconnection-related announcements:

• Tel^x itself announced its expansion into two new interconnection facilities: One in Dallas and another in New York City.
• Deutsche Telekom International Carrier Sales and Solutions announced that layer 2 Ethernet transport service is now accessible to carriers from five of telx’s U.S. interconnect facilities.
• Hibernia Atlantic announced the addition of 80 wavelengths of capacity on its trans-Atlantic transport network.
• DataNet Communications Group, the parent company of Hudson Valley DataNet, announced the availability of a fiber optic ring in Northern New Jersey.
• Intelligent network service provider iNetworks selected telx as its primary interconnection facility provider in the U.S.
• Info-Source International Development and HKCOLO announced the first carrier-neutral colocation site in Mainland China.
• Ipsmarx unveiled a new Class 5 module for its VoIP softswitch.
• IP transit provider Mzima Networks announced that it has installed a point of presence in a telx interconnection facility in New York.
• Wholesale VoIP provider Luna Telecom announced that it has selected telx as its interconnection facility provider in Miami.
• Metro fiber provider 4Connections announced that it has deployed a dark fiber ring for health care provider Meridian Health System.