Cox turns to Level 3 for backbone

Cox Communications announced Wednesday it has selected Level 3 to replace Excite@Home as its backbone transport provider for its cable broadband operations.

While Cox is building up its own ISP and access infrastructure to parallel its cable systems across the country, Level 3 will provide most of the IP backbone linking Cox’s regional data centers to each other and the public Internet.

Cox now boasts 779,000 cable-modem subscribers, all of whom currently reside on the failing Excite@Home network. Cox and several other MSOs signed 11th-hour agreements with @Home last month to keep their networks operating until the end of February.

--Kevin Fitchard, staff writer