LayerOne to link Cable & Wireless back to the U.S.

With the sale of Cable & Wireless’s U.S. transport and hosting business to Savvis last week, the global carrier has selected LayerOne to maintain its international connections in the U.S. for multinational customers.

Cable & Wireless sold its U.S. network and data center assets for $155 million after a bankruptcy auction, giving up its 2000-enterprise customer base for IP transport and an additional 1000 customers served from its 15 regional data centers. While Cable & Wireless is giving its U.S. customers, it will continue to maintain links in North America for those customers with sites on U.S. soil.

Cable & Wireless is extending a previous agreement with LayerOne for use of its Miami interconnection POP to offload its traffic destined for Latin America. Under the new agreement, Cable & Wireless will use its POPs in Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and New York to connect to other carrier’s networks and to its customers’ sites.

LayerOne started out as a co-location facility provider, supplying interconnects for domestic providers, but with the recession and the ensuing fall-off in the co-location market, LayerOne began relying more and more on interconnection services. In 2003 it began expanding into the International market, targeting Latin and South American customers through its POPs in Texas and Florida. It later launched facilities in New York and LA and began courting European and Asian providers as well as expanding its market to true global carriers. LayerOne recently announced deals with Telefonica and France Telecom to provide access into Latin America from Europe.

"Those are big name customers; they provide us with a lot of credibility, especially with the smaller and medium-sized carriers we are trying to attract," said LayerOne CEO Brandon Freeman.