100 Mbps for $1000 Per Month

Cogent Communications is widening its backbone from 10 Gbps to 80 Gbps as it rolls out cheap bandwidth in major cities in the United States. Take note of a new kind of ISP, the Ethernet Service Provider (ESP).

by ISP-Planet Staff [April 24, 2001]

Cogent Communications announced that it is widening its OC-192 (10 Gbps) optic network pipe to 80 Gbps by deploying seven additional 10 Gbps optic pipes.

Cogent sells metropolitan bandwidth at a very low price. Said Daryl Schoolar of Cahners In-Stat, "Cogent is dropping the floor on Internet pricing. The company's offering of 100 Mbps connectivity at $1,000 per month should send the competition running."

He noted that Cogent's other advantage over metro fiber competitors such as Yipes is that Cogent owns a nationwide backbone, not just a local loop. Cogent's network map is available here.

Optic networks use Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) to send up to 128 different wavelengths down a single strand.

Cogent's network is an all-Cisco network, and Cogent claims that it provides each customer a fully dedicated, non-oversubscribed 100 Mbps connection that is not shared with anyone else. Subscribers receive 100 Mbps connections using standard Category 5 risers. The access cable plugs directly into a Fast Ethernet adapter on an existing LAN.

The Ethernet Services Provider (ESP)
Yipes and Cogent both rely on popular Ethernet technology. In a recent report (for those interested, the report describes Yipes' equipment in detail), "Yipes: The Prototypical Ethernet Services Provider," the Gartner Group noted that Yipes, "has taken a simple architecture, employed conservative design principles and built the service in very rapid, "cookie-cutter" fashion. This is not in any way demeaning; we believe it is the only rational way to achieve such a large-scale rollout quickly and successfully."

"By employing a straightforward design, the cost of adding a new building is only about $70,000, and a new building can be brought up within 45 days. Yipes employs a single service level, and there is minimum sharing among customers. Access switching is nonblocking; the backbone is not oversubscribed and DWDM is just beginning to be used. Using this design approach, Yipes has aggressively built an extensive operational network in 18 months: 20 cities, 92 lit fiber rings and 22,000 lit fiber strand miles."

The report also noted that despite the rapid rollout, Yipes' annualized revenue is less than $10 million and its multiyear contract value less than $20 million.

Cogent's network buildout was made possible in part by a $280 million Cisco partnership and dark fiber leases of $100 million from Metromedia and $215 million from Williams Communications. Revenue information for Cogent was not available at press time.

—End