Carrier neutral data centre firm Interxion has joined forces with Bord Gais’s fibre carrier Aurora to enable a European provider of metro Ethernet technology provide 10Mbps to 1Gbps services to all the major business parks in the Dublin area, and eventually to the remaining metropolitan area networks (MANs) across Ireland.
In a deal valued at €1.1m Aurora and Interxion will provide private data services firm Broighter Netowrks with the foundation to operate its new MAN services. Interxion will house the core network node infrastructure and connects and Aurora will use its Greater Dublin area network to connect to all the major business parks in and around the city.
Broighter Networks will begin offering resilient, cost-effective, high-speed broadband services to enterprise customers and service providers in the greater Dublin area. The services operate at speeds of between 10Mbps and 1Gbps and are based on Metro Ethernet technology. Applications for these services include enterprise site interconnects, Internet access, wireless base station aggregation and mobile phone backhaul.
Interxion’s 12,000 sq ft data centre in Park West Dublin will host and monitor key elements of Broighter’s core network infrastructure and will enable businesses that opt for the service to interconnect into any of the leading Tier 1 carriers that collocate at Interxion’s data centre. These include Eircom, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, Colt Telecom, Esat BT, NTL, Packet Exchange, Tiscali, Smart Telecom, Irish Broadband and Broadband Communications. Interxion’s Dublin data centre is connected to 19 other data centres across Europe.
Bord Gais’ networks arm, Aurora, operates as an open access carrier’s carrier and has a 48-fibre network that spans over 450km nationally, including 120km of fibre spanning the greater Dublin area.
According to the sales and marketing manager of Interxion Ireland, Jason O’Conaill, Broighter’s services will focus initially on Dublin, but with nationwide connectivity could eventually service the 19 MANs being deployed by the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources around Ireland as part of the National Broadband Plan. He said: “Fibre in the ground is useless to businesses in Ireland unless someone comes in and can light the fibre and enable companies to make use of the MANs.”
Joerg Steegmueller, chief marketing officer for Broighter Networks, explained: “We chose to partner with Interxion because we needed a financially secure hosting partner, offering carrier neutrality and round-the-clock monitoring and support services. We were very impressed with the exceptional level of service from Interxion’s highly trained staff, which demonstrated their professional approach to this relationship.
“We selected Aurora Telecom’s infrastructure for its complete coverage of the greater Dublin area,” said Steegmueller. “The configuration of Aurora Telecom’s fibre optic infrastructure in multiple rings allows us to offer highly-resilient telecommunications services in a cost-effective way.”
By John Kennedy
