30 September 2003 London Lightwave-- Metropolitan bandwidth provider 51° is extending its network coverage by adding four points-of-presence (PoPs) across London. The PoPs include the carrier neutral London Hosting Centre, 1 & 2 Harbour Exchange and Interxion. The metro bandwidth provider is also adding Wimbledon to its roster of wholly owned PoPs, bringing its total to 23, the most PoPs owned by any of the London metropolitan bandwidth operators, according to the company.
In May, 51° announced four new PoPs and committed to further increases by the end of 2003. Owned by the utilities giant, EDF Energy, 51°'s network is deployed through the utility company's London-wide infrastructure. As 75% of the metro bandwidth provider's traffic terminates in a carrier neutral location, the additional PoPs support the company's drive to conduct more volume business. 51°'s unique ability to offer diverse connectivity throughout London is now supported by its local presence within key London neighbourhoods including Canary Wharf, the City, Docklands, Waterloo and Holborn. 51° owns and operates diversely meshed fibre rings and has presence in a whole host of colocation, disaster recovery, and multi-tenanted units.
The company has created a 160-km network circling London and extending into the capital's busiest districts with suitable ducting to provide direct access into customer's buildings. 51° has five wholly owned carrier grade nodes of its own plus presence in twenty-three carrier neutral hotels. The company also has wayleave access to hundreds of multi-tenant units throughout the capital. Its numerous river crossings can provide customers with total London diversity.
51° offers connectivity throughout London to international and national telcos, ISPs and ASPs, systems integrators, and resellers. Customers are turning to 51° for managed bandwidth up to STM-64 and incremental bandwidth over an MPLS Ethernet platform scaling from 10-Mbits/sec to 10-Gbits/sec.