Oak Brook, IL - January 15, 2002 - Looking Glass Networks, Inc., a facilities-based provider of high bandwidth metro transport services, has implemented the Cisco ONS 15454 Metro Optical Transport Platform and Cisco Transport Manager as key components of its optical networking platform. Looking Glass recently completed network construction and turned up lit bandwidth, dark fiber and collocation services to customers in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York/Northern New Jersey, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C./Northern Virginia. (See related release "Looking Glass Networks Turns Up Services in Nine U.S. Metropolitan Markets," 1/15/02.)
"We deployed Cisco's ONS 15454 in our physically diverse metro networks because of its ability to support many types of data traffic and deliver services rapidly to meet the needs for our customers," said Lynn Refer, CEO of Looking Glass. "Building a flexible network that supports multiple services like SONET, Wavelengths and Ethernet is essential to our service offering. Our strategy to build and operate the most scalable high-speed networks is designed to bring our customers cost-saving benefits now and in the future."
"We are pleased Looking Glass Networks has selected Cisco COMET solutions to build a flexible, innovative optical foundation that supports its vision of efficient multiservice delivery," said Tom Fallon, Vice President and General Manager, Optical Networking, Cisco Systems. "With a focus on rapid provisioning and multiservice scalability, Cisco optical products will help Looking Glass address the bandwidth bottleneck in the metro and deliver valuable high-capacity services to its customers." The ONS 15454 and Cisco Transport Manager are components of the extensive Cisco Complete Optical Multiservice Edge and Transport (COMET) portfolio.
Looking Glass has deployed a groundbreaking operational support system (OSS) architecture which uses element management as an important component in delivering convenience and accessibility to customers with bandwidth needs. "As the element manager in our legacy-free OSS suite, Cisco Transport Manager is the information aggregation point for network elements, acting as the hub for all network activities ranging from point and click provisioning to fault management," said Refer.
To meet metro customers' critical requirements for network diversity and service availability, Looking Glass built its own networks that are physically diverse from other carriers in the capacity-constrained metro area. Looking Glass has deployed an application agnostic platform, meaning it offers the full range of carrier class SONET, Ethernet and Wavelength lit services from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, along with dark fiber and carrier-neutral collocation services. Further differentiating its services, Looking Glass has developed and deployed a flexible OSS suite that facilitates rapid customer provisioning, capable of turning-up service in less than 10 days, and offers point-and-click convenience through a Web-based customer service portal.
