Cogent acquires ISPs in France, Spain
Service Provider News Report Newsletter  By Carolyn Duffy Marsan, Network World, 02/16/04

With its recent acquisitions of distressed ISPs in France and Spain, Cogent Communications Group is gunning to become a top-tier global service provider.

Cogent announced its acquisitions of LamdaNet Comunications France and LamdaNet Espana in January. These acquisitions give Cogent an IP footprint and data centers in nine European countries including France, Spain, the U.K., Belgium, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.

Cogent already provides high-speed Internet access in 30 metropolitan areas in the U.S. and Canada. The carrier targets large multi-tenant buildings in central business districts, and it has hooked up 850 such buildings so far. 

The company offers dedicated 100M bit/sec and 1000M-bit/sec Internet access over its 80G bit/sec backbone. Altogether, the company owns 19,900 route miles of backbone and metropolitan fiber in North America.

"We have the largest Internet backbone in the U.S. in terms of transport capacity," Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer asserts. "In addition to the backbone, we have metropolitan-area networks in 21 markets...We believe we have the second largest amount of internetworking capacity behind MCI."

With its European acquisitions, Cogent adds 10,000 kilometers of fiber that has been lit to 30G bit/sec. Cogent also acquired 27 data centers in Europe and 25 collocation facilities for enterprise customers.

Cogent is upgrading the European backbone to build an architecture that's similar to what the carrier has built in North America. Cogent is deploying 100 additional core routers and building 25 more collocation facilities in Europe. When these upgrades are done, Cogent will offer high-speed Internet access to businesses in 40 European cities as well as the point-to-point Layer 1 (transport) services to carriers that LamdaNet offered.

"In Europe, the buildings tend to be smaller and less concentrated, and they have the incumbent PTTs providing direct access," Schaeffer says. "We'll offer E1 and E3 off-net services. Or businesses can put their content on carrier-neutral co-location facilities."