CityNet Telecommunications Inc., a provider of last-mile broadband infrastructure, announced it has signed a landmark license and access agreement with the City of Vienna, Austria, permitting the company to use Vienna's sewer system to build last-mile fiber optic networks. Vienna becomes CityNet's first European city and the fourth city overall to sign such an agreement. CityNet is a broadband company offering this sewer-based approach to solving the problem of how to connect individual buildings to large fiber optic networks that typically circle around cities.
CityNet's solution gives cities an advanced in-city fiber optic broadband infrastructure without trenching streets, disrupting traffic or degrading city life with gridlock and noise. In high-speed Internet and data-driven world, this creates a huge economic development advantage for cities that are competing to attract and retain businesses.
Vienna joins the U.S. cities of Indianapolis, Albuquerque and Omaha in what is fast-becoming a revolution in the development of last-mile broadband infrastructure. CityNet is negotiating similar agreements with 26 other U.S. and European cities. The company plans to begin deployment in Vienna in the fall of 2001.
One of the greatest obstacles to the rapid deployment of broadband Internet, data and voice services is the need to rip-up city streets to lay fiber optic cables. By using the sewer system, CityNet avoids this problem and gains access to the basements of thousands of buildings, bridging the so-called "last mile" gap that separates individual buildings from the larger "beltway" fiber optic networks that circle around cities.
According to Dr. Michael Häupl, Mayor and Governor of Vienna, the city has been deploying metro-area, backbone fiber optic networks in larger, man-accessible sewers for the past five years.
CityNet's strategic technology partner CableRunner N.A., provides a patented in-sewer fiber optic network deployment technology for use in man-accessible sewer pipes (36 inches and larger). CableRunner, which was integral in introducing and facilitating the agreement with the city of Vienna, has already deployed their in-sewer technology in European cities including Paris and Berlin.
For smaller non-man-accessible sewer pipes, CityNet uses a small computer-driven robot known as S.A.M., to install stainless steel rings and conduit to support the fiber optic cables inside of sewer pipes. Ka-Te Systems AG, a Swiss sewer robotics company, manufactures the 6-inch-wide, 36-inch-long, cylindrical robots for CityNet. These robots have been deployed successfully in various European cities such as Hamburg and Regensberg, Germany.
As a wholesale, carrier's-carrier, CityNet installs its fiber optic networks and then leases them to telecommunications carriers, Internet and network service providers.
CityNet's other strategic partners include Alcatel and Carter & Burgess.
About CityNet:
Founded in 1999, CityNet is a broadband infrastructure company that builds carrier-class last-mile fiber optic networks. For more information, visit www.citynettelecom.com.