tw telecom provides new Ethernet interconnection product

Targeted at international carriers and cloud application providers--which typically don't own a lot of their own domestic network facilities--the new service allows these service providers to get access to what tw telecom says is thousands of enterprise customers and buildings via a single Ethernet connection.

Having a single provider to get to multiple Ethernet connections means that these service providers don't have to seek out multiple individual External Network to Network Interconnection (E-NNI) agreements.

Instead, they can get Ethernet access from a single connection from tw telecom's network that currently serves 75 markets.

The release of this new product is in line with the service provider's mentality around serving the data center market. While it does have its own set of data centers, the service provider has been aggressively pursuing opportunities to serve other data center and cloud providers by providing fiber connectivity to their respective facilities.

To date, the service provider has fiber connections to 350 third-party data centers.

Larissa Herda, CEO and chairman of tw telecom, said during the Deutsche Bank 2012 Media & Telecom Conference in March that instead of going out and buying data centers it has instead decided to "partner with data centers and partner hosting companies and enable the cloud with our network."