Fiber optic network for Wall Street West

Connecting New York City finance with Northeastern Pennsylvania Harrisburg n Agreements have been announced to build the communications network that would create a back-up Wall Street in Northeastern Pa. Governor Edward Rendell, along with representatives of Wall Street West, a federal and state-funded program created to develop a total back-up solution for New York City financial institutions in the event of disaster, on June 7 announced an agreement for Level 3 Communications to build a fiber optic network connecting lower Manhattan with northeastern Pennsylvania. While providing better connectivity between New York and northeastern Pennsylvania, the Wall Street West fiber network will also interconnect with an already robust fiber-optic infrastructure that covers all nine counties covered by the Wall Street West initiative, including Carbon, Berks, Lackawanna, Lehigh, Luzerne, Monroe, Northampton, Pike and Wayne. These locations offer many infrastructure benefits of northeastern Pennsylvania for firms that do not require instantaneous backup. The Level 3 Communications-built optical network will enable redundant, instantaneous data transmission between the two areas, further establishing the northeastern Pennsylvania region as a premier back-up operations location for Wall Street firms. To provide synchronous data transmission, fiber optic lines cannot exceed 125 fiber miles in each direction. Once the fiber network is in place, portions of northeastern Pennsylvania will be the only locations within the 125 fiber-mile limit surrounding Manhattan to also meet Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission recommendations that backup sites not rely upon the same infrastructure components used by financial firms’ primary sites. Wall Street West is a $40 million initiative involving a variety of federal, state and private-funding sources. Nearly $15 million in state funds are leveraging up to $25 million in federal and private investments. “Northeastern Pennsylvania is already home to a number of financial firms, and this initiative is essential to continuing the area’s advancement and economic growth,” said Gov. Rendell. “It will also strengthen New York City’s status as the financial capitol of the world by providing firms there with mission-critical data back-up.” The highly resilient fiber network will provide business continuity, recovery and data replication for the financial services industry. Level 3 Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: LVLT), a global leader in telecommunications solutions, will build what is known as a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical network. The network will provide integrated data communications and support a variety of applications, including: synchronous data replication, streaming video, video instruction and workstation video conferencing, converged networking, storage-area networks, Intranet support and support for Internet access for the end-user employees. “Northeastern Pennsylvania is ideally situated to provide back-up operations for Wall Street firms n close, but not too close,” said Catherine Bolton, Project Director at Wall Street West. “With the implementation of this fiber network, we are able to meet the diverse needs of the financial services industry, while providing a low cost of doing business and exceptional quality of life.” “With world-class infrastructure and the availability of talent as recognized pillars for economic success, the Administration’s Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development initiative last year supplied the seed capital for educating and preparing the workforce necessary for the success of Wall Street West,” said Emily Stover DeRocco, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training. “Today’s announcement on the delivery of a fiber optic network to this region unites the infrastructure to the talent development strategies already being implemented in northeast Pennsylvania.”