By Tara Seals

Posted: 04/2001

Sphera Officially Launches in Metro Fiber
Space
By Tara Seals

Sphera Optical Networks NA Inc. (www.spheranetworks.com),
which offers lit fiber via an optical network in metro areas, made its bow
during the CompTel 20th Anniversary Convention in Orlando, Fla.

Using DWDM ring network architecture, the company offers carriers, ISPs and
ASPs 155-megabit to 10-gigabit all-optical connectivity from its networks to
collocation or web-hosting sites and data centers, and to other service
providers.

According to Harold Grossnickle, Sphera’s chairman and CEO, the company is
unique, because competitors in the "adjacent market space provide 45mb and
gigabit Ethernet connections to the customer premises with a combination of
optical and electrical interfaces." He says this is less efficient in
provisioning and network management than providing an all-optical option.

"We are determined to break the metro bandwidth bottlenecks and increase
network efficiencies and performance," Grossnickle says. "Sphera’s
presence in key cities provides our customers the way to significantly improve
provisioning intervals to days instead of weeks or months, and to connect to
multiple service locations with metropolitan core networks that are managed,
expanded and reconfigured with unprecedented speed and flexibility."

In the best-case scenario, if customers use a full 2.5 gigabit wavelength
from Sphera, they can self-provision among points on the ring, thereby creating
a mesh network in architecture and operation.

The brainchild of founder and vice chairman Peter Tierney, New York-based
Sphera spent last year ramping up its personnel, operations centers and network
footprint. Earlier this year the company announced its optical network had been
completed in Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles and Miami and in London, rounding out
the already operational footprint in New York and northern New Jersey. By April,
the network is expected to be ready in Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, the
Washington, D.C./northern Virginia metro area, and in Amsterdam, Netherlands.