Metromedia Fiber Network, Inc.
Monday announced it has filed for licensing with German regulatory
authorities to construct a high-speed, high-bandwidth intra-city fiber
network in Frankfurt.
The company will construct a German national
telecommunications network covering key centers of business, finance,
government and trade.
Metromedia’s German subsidiary, Metromedia Fiber Network GmbH, plans an initial
build of approximately 32,400 fiber kilometers. The project will and extend
the reach of the company’s previously announced German national ring into
the local German telecommunications loop.
The Frankfurt network will be the MFN’s first intra-city network in a
European tier one market and will enable the company to provide various
types of high-bandwidth communication services to the banking and brokerage
center of Germany.
“Europe is the world’s second largest economy, estimated to account for
more than $300 billion in telecom services and equipment. Germany, which
is central to this community, remains a driving force in Europe’s economy
and has a government that is actively promoting alternative network
infrastructure development,” said Howard Finkelstein, Metromedia Fiber Network’s president.
The MFN German network will connect the economic centers of Dortmund,
Bremen, Essen, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, Mannheim and Stuttgart as
well as the cities of Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Nuremberg and Munich.
“By expanding to Frankfurt, Metromedia Fiber Network is establishing the
necessary foothold for continuing our expansion to new markets and
enhancing our position as the company that is eliminating the bandwidth
barrier for the largest users of communications services within the local
metropolitan area network.”
The network will contain supertrunks of up to 432 individual strands of
fiber, significantly more capacity than Europe’s older copper-based networks.
The MFN German network will be capable of supporting Dense Wave Division
Multiplexing (DWDM), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Synchronous Digital
Hierarchy (SDH), gigabit Ethernet, Escon and Voice over Internet Protocol
(VoIP) technologies.
“Service providers, corporations and governments that plan on deploying
advanced data, video and multimedia applications over the existing copper
infrastructure will be in for a few surprises as a result of the technical
limitations presented by these legacy networks.
“Metromedia Fiber Network
is constructing an alternative, 100 percent fiber-based
infrastructure that delivers the bandwidth, speed and capacity needed to
ensure the successful transmission of these new and advanced services,”
Finkelstein said.
