Optical Wave Providers

Fri Sep 2 15:29:09 UTC 2016

You're not wrong, but you're not right for two reasons.

I believe the OP really wants a "transparent" service.  It could
be a true wave, but it could also be a 10G channel muxed on a 100G
service.  The properties they probably really care about are a raw
bitstream and guaranteed bandwidth.  In the world of marketing and
sales speek with carriers this is a "wavelength" service, even if
it's not a true wavelength.  Indeed, these services are often made
up of different underlying services end to end, a dark fiber tail,
a Nx10G local transport, muxed on to an Nx100G long haul transport,
and in reverse on the other end.

On the technical side of things there are plenty of carriers with
Nx10G systems across country that have not upgraded them to Nx100G
for any number of reasons, often they are 40-80% full of paying
customers and profitable.  They are quite happy to sell an additional
10G wave and get more money out of their sunk cost.  Indeed, if you
want a wave on the right path (read, paid for, with plenty of free
capacity) you can get waves for rock bottom prices.

To the OP's original point, major carriers that offer this class
of service include Level 3, CenturyLink, Zayo, and XO.  Depending on
location there are regional carriers like LightTower, specialzed
providers IX Reach, or possibly even your favorite colocation provider
like Equinix or CoreSite.  There's probably at least 30 more, many
don't advertise these services widely (low margin, requires clued
customer) but if you ask they are available.

-- 
Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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