T-Mobile USA announced backhaul agreements with Bright House Networks, FPL FiberNet, IP Networks Inc. and Zayo Bandwidth. The agreements cover sites in Tampa, Fla., Orlando, Fla., South Florida, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Memphis, Tenn., respectively.
T-Mobile said these backhaul arrangements, when fully implemented over the next six to 18 months, will help to enable it to deliver 3G services in a significantly less expensive manner. They will also expand existing network capacity and bandwidth to accommodate new, data-hungry mobile services and applications using HSDPA technology.
The agreements are as follows:
- Bright House Networks — Tampa and Orlando. T-Mobile has signed an agreement with Bright House Networks to utilize Bright House Networks’ extensive fiber distribution plant to provide backhaul in central Florida.
- FPL FiberNet — South Florida. T-Mobile will now announce its relationship with FPL FiberNet as its backhaul carrier in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach in South Florida.
- IP Networks — San Francisco. T-Mobile has signed an agreement with IP Networks to provide Ethernet backhaul services in the greater San Francisco area. IP Networks has built and operates an extensive Ethernet Over Fiber telecommunications system primarily on the utility infrastructure of Pacific Gas and Electric Company. With 1,060 cell sites, the contract with IP Networks is reported to be among the largest all-fiber backhaul agreements in the country.
- Zayo Bandwidth — Philadelphia and Memphis. Zayo Bandwidth is a provider of high-capacity, fiber-based bandwidth services. T-Mobile’s agreement with Zayo covers the Philadelphia and Memphis metropolitan areas, and more than 450 unique sites. The agreement with Zayo in Philadelphia was among the first all-fiber backhaul agreements entered into by T-Mobile.
T-Mobile USA also confirmed plans to deliver 3G wireless broadband service to 27 major markets in the United States by the end of 2008. The planned expansion is expected to deliver T-Mobile 3G services to more than two-thirds of T-Mobile’s current data customers, with meaningful expansion to additional customers and markets through 2009.
T-Mobile’s UMTS/HSDPA high-speed data network is currently available across 13 major metropolitan markets.http://www.t-mobile.com