Enterprise customers are finally seeing the light when it comes to obtaining huge chunks of bandwidth in campus and metropolitan-area networks. Large organizations now have the option of getting out of the business of leasing and lighting dark fiber themselves, and moving to multigigabit wavelength services managed by service providers.

There are several reasons for looking at making the shift, but chief among them is ease of management.

Large enterprise customers first began leasing dark fiber from service providers in the early 1990s. Their data needs were exploding, and the SONET and ATM services offered by carriers were expensive and not very efficient at transporting protocols such as Enterprise Systems Connection, Fibre Channel and Ethernet. So instead of paying for traditional carrier services, large companies -- especially financial institutions -- began leasing chunks of fiber between their facilities, lighting the lines with their own switches and managing the fiber connection end-to-end.

But the recent advent of dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) and its growing presence in MANs has the potential to lessen the appeal of leasing dark fiber in this manner.

DWDM multiplies the bandwidth potential of fiber many times over by allowing a single fiber strand to carry multiple wavelengths of light. For instance, Nortel Networks' OPTera Metro 5000 series optical platforms can carry up to 64 wavelengths across one fiber ring.

Managed wavelength services are available from a variety of service providers, including 360networks, Metromedia Fiber Network, Level 3, Global Crossing, XO Communications and AT&T. While the service price will vary depending on fiber availability and the exact services ordered, all these firms are looking for very large customers that will sign long-term contracts worth millions.

For example, AT&T expects customers who sign up for its recently announced DWDM-based Ultravailable Broadband Network service to spend between $10 million and $100 million over the course of a five-year contract. Ultravailable Broadband Network provides metropolitan-area connections at up to 2.4G bit/sec.

Other firms, including Cogent Communications and Yipes Communications, offer Ethernet services over optical wavelengths aimed at smaller businesses. Cogent's services begin at $1,000 per month for a 100M bit/sec Internet connection. But Yipes' and Cogent's services don't provide the same bandwidth or service-level agreements that providers are targeting at larger companies.

GiantLoop Network, a Waltham, Mass., service provider, offers optical and professional services to Fortune 250 companies, focusing specifically on financial institutions. Although GiantLoop doesn't own any fiber, the company will obtain fiber for its customers, light it and manage the customers' networks. The firm supports several protocols running across optical wavelengths in metropolitan, campus and intercity networks.

Jon Oltsik, GiantLoop's vice president of corporate marketing, says there are a number of advantages to a company choosing an outsourced, managed wavelength service, rather than setting up its own dark fiber network or buying SONET services.

One is ccost. If a firm wants to run its own services over dark fiber, it must pay for a dark fiber lease, switches to light the fiber, management platforms and specialized personnel to run the network. The

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