VISUALIZATION

University of Arkansas and University of Nebraska Immediately Leverage New Services: FiberCo, a fiber holding company formed by Internet2 to support dark fiber initiatives for U.S. research and higher education, today announced that it has teamed with Level 3 Communications to offer a new suite of customized professional services to assist universities and regional networks with efficiently planning, installing, managing and operating their advanced network infrastructures. Called FiberCo Professional Services, this highly anticipated offering is designed to meet the growing need among the research and education community for support in developing and operating carrier-class networks that can reliably sustain next-generation network applications and services. Since its inception, FiberCo Professional Services has already engaged with University of Arkansas and University of Nebraska to assist in the development and deployment of their regional optical networks. "The research and higher education community has worked diligently with FiberCo to acquire the network infrastructure necessary to build the foundation for innovation and collaboration," said Steve Cotter, director of FiberCo. "FiberCo is now answering the call of our community to provide the comprehensive expertise and project oversight necessary to bring these advanced networks to life in the most cost-effective and streamlined manner possible." FiberCo Professional Services leverages Level 3's highly-experienced team of networking professionals combined with FiberCo's strong background in dark fiber project management and contract negotiation. The new services will offer Internet2 members true end-to-end support for any and all components of the network life-cycle: from inception and design to network management and maintenance. Offerings include but are not limited to: network architecture and design, installation, staging and implementation services, order management and asset tracking, and 24 x 7 x 365 operations support. University of Arkansas is currently developing the Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network to connect eleven universities in the state of Arkansas to facilitate more advanced networking in support of next-generation research and education applications and services. The university has selected FiberCo to assist in gathering network requirements, discovery and procurement of dark fiber, as well as support for analysis and final selection of network equipment vendors. To date, the University of Arkansas has completed the first phase of its professional services engagement as well as purchased over 500 route miles of dark fiber from FiberCo that will not only connect campuses within the state but will also serve as the basis for a connection between the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and Tulsa, Oklahoma. "Arkansas is building a regional optical network for research, education, medical services and other applications," explained Robert Zimmerman, director of computing services at the University of Arkansas. "We realized that additional professional services would make our efforts more successful. We looked for an organization that was suited to our needs. The University of Arkansas has been an Internet2 member for almost a decade and we were able to expand our relationship with Internet2 and FiberCo to secure the expertise and insights that were desired. I do not know how we could have accomplished the work on our project if we had not extended that relationship with Internet2." In addition, University of Nebraska is also building a high performance regional network to provide advanced networking services to the state's research and education community, as well as enhancing its connection to the new Internet2 networking infrastructure. In particular, the new fiber will facilitate the university's participation in the Large Hadron Collider project - the largest particle accelerator in the world expected to come online in 2007 at CERN in Switzerland. Through its agreement with FiberCo, the University of Nebraska will receive overall project management, network architecture, design, and recommendations on equipment/optronics options as well as on site network engineering support. Nebraska has already purchased over 260 route miles of dark fiber from FiberCo which will serve as the basic infrastructure for their advanced networking needs. "Rather than invest the time and resources needed to bring optical networking experts in-house, we are leveraging the expertise of FiberCo Professional Services to provide the comprehensive support our team needs to make informed and appropriate decisions about our next-generation network," said Dale Finkelson, director of networking, University of Nebraska. "By examining our specific requirements and understanding our unique networking environment, FiberCo has been a committed partner and has helped us to deliver the best network services possible to our community." FiberCo has arranged with Level 3 to provide pricing for these network design and implementation services at attractive rates. Pricing is tailored to fit individual customer needs allowing customers to pick and choose from an a la carte set of services that can be priced either as a bundle or individually itemized. For more information on FiberCo professional services visit its Web site.