Jan. 31, 2002 -- FiberNet Telecom Group this week announced that it has opened the new "meet-me room" at 60 Hudson Street in New York City, one of the world's busiest carrier hotels.
The 15,000 square foot facility will allow the landmark building's more than 100 telecom tenants to interconnect their networks.
"We are revolutionizing the way business will be done at 60 Hudson Street,'' said Robert Getreu, senior managing director of GVA Williams Real Estate Company, which manages 60 Hudson Street. "In the building's state-of-the-art Meet-Me-Room, existing and future tenants can now rapidly interconnect with each other in one central location, providing scalable access to the growing demand for bandwidth.''
The meet-me room will also provide a colocation area, allowing carriers who have been shut out of space to have a presence in the building. The facility offers standardized colocation cabinets and customized cages for carriers to house their equipment.
The colocation units are connected to the central cross-connection area within the meet-me room with optical and electrical terminations, allowing customers to connect their networks efficiently.
"The opening of this facility marks a major achievement in the advancement of our business strategy,'' said Michael S. Liss, president and chief executive officer of FiberNet.
"We firmly believe that metro market, where demand still exceeds supply, continues to be the greatest opportunity in the telecommunications marketplace, and we are leading the way with innovative solutions to solve the bottleneck confronting our customers," Liss added. "The meet-me- room strengthens our premier carrier-neutral market position in the metro market.''
FiberNet partnered with GVA Williams to build and operate the meet-me room on the ground floor of the massive building, which required the installation of a 72-conduit system that touches every floor.
The 60 Hudson Street building has a grand history as a cornerstone in America's communications infrastructure. The Western Union headquarters was designed by architect Ralph Walker, noted for his "distinctive design approach related to the contemporary Art Deco style," according to the New York Landmark Preservation Commission.
The 943,000 square foot facility was built between 1928-30 at a cost of nearly $45 million - which, adjusted for inflation, is the equivalent of $428 million today. It initially housed 70 million feet of wire and 30 miles of conduit, as well as a library and gym.
FiberNet has a presence in nine major carrier hotels in the New York metropolitan area, six in Los Angeles and another in Chicago. The company also installed fiber in 13 major office buildings in New York and seven in Chicago, positioning its enwtork as a high-speed bridge between carriers' long-haul networks and the tenants in those buildings.