Advanced Network

Regional/metro network

MBC owns and operates over 800 route miles of backbone fiber in Southern Virginia. Covering 20 counties and 4 cities, the network provides carrier-class transport services utilizing Nortel’s Optical Multiservice Edge (OME) 6500 platform. This backbone network includes multiple OC-192 and OC-48 SONET/TDM rings to provide a robust, reliable, and scalable infrastructure to support MBC member transport needs. MBC supports traditional TDM services (DS1/DS3 to OC-x) as well as Ethernet over SONET and wavelength support. Technical details of the network include:

• 144 strand SMF-28E fiber backbone, armored sheath protection
• Approximately 85% of network is underground construction, 15% aerial construction
• Backbone node facilities are secured 12' x 20' concrete shelter buildings
• 200amps DC power system, battery backups, and emergency generators on-site

Long-haul network

In addition to the regional network in Southern Virginia, MBC operates a long-haul fiber network for optical transport to key peering hubs, carrier neutral data centers, and carrier interconnection points. MBC has fiber IRU agreements in place with several providers for diverse connections for the Southern Virginia regional network to Northern Virginia and key markets in the southeastern United States.

MBC has deployed an Infinera DTN switched WDM Digital ROADM system (Remotely configurable Optical Add/Drop Mux) providing 400Gbps of dedicated capacity on the MBC network.

• 400Gbps capacity lit today (can expand to 800Gbps with minimal effort)
• System provides 1Gbps, 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps services
• GMPLS enabled for diversity requirements