Santa Monica City Net adopts MRV optical communications gear

Santa Monica City Net is a 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) broadband initiative by the city to support an environment for local businesses to compete in the global economy with cutting-edge network solutions, describes a spokesperson. As a secure, fast, and cost-effective, fiber-optic network, Santa Monica City Net provides the opportunity to integrate data, voice, and video, and efficiently manage data exchanges with business partners. The City provides access direct to local businesses through Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that service Santa Monica.

The city initially began working with MRV in 2005 to build a network for city departments using its own fiber infrastructure. Jory Wolf, chief information officer for the City of Santa Monica, and his team worked with MRV to build and install the fiber-optic network. Santa Monica City Net is based on MRV’s LambdaDriver wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical transport system, OptiSwitch 9124 (OS9124) packet optical aggregation units, and OptiSwitch 912 (OS912) multi-port demarcation platform -- all managed and provisioned by the company’s Pro-Vision software.

MRV LambdaDriver units were installed to connect Santa Monica businesses with Los Angeles’ premiere data center with more than 160 ISPs and one of the major hub sites in Santa Monica. OS912 units were also installed at multi-tenant buildings throughout Santa Monica and OS9124 units were installed to aggregate data from those buildings.

“The City of Santa Monica needed a solution that could provide the flexibility to quickly and simply connect its business community with local ISPs,” says Noam Lotan, chief executive officer of MRV Communications. “By implementing the LambdaDriver and OptiSwitch platforms, the City of Santa Monica was able to cost-effectively connect local businesses to over 160 ISPs that were able to offer affordable broadband solutions to an expanded market.”

“With each new project, our priority is to provide the community with innovative solutions that promote business activity and economic growth,” adds Wolf. “MRV worked with us to design a network that would best serve our community.”