Cox and Charter Cable Link Networks

Aiming to serve businesses with communications needs that cross their service footprints, two cable giants, Cox Business and Charter Business, have created a fiber link between Las Vegas and Reno and one between Orange County, Calif., and the Los Angeles metro area.

As a result, businesses in Las Vegas and Reno can link offices with a dedicated SONET, Ethernet or IP-based transport connection. Companies in the two California markets can also link sites and information systems.

"While customers have always been able to obtain fiber optic network services within the Charter Business and Cox Business footprints, they were limited to regional telephone companies to connect locations across the two footprints," said Jim McGann, vice-president and general manager for Charter Business, in a statement.

Network interconnection efforts are at the core of cable companies’ efforts, detailed by top execs at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s Cable Show last May, to evolve far beyond residential TV providers to serve the needs of businesses.

In fact, the business-focused units of cablecos have partnered with the likes of Microsoft Corp. to offer SMBs much more than dedicated connections.

Cablecos are banking, literally and figuratively, on snaring SMBs which they firmly believe have been underserved or forgotten as big regional telcos focus first on residential triple-play deployments.

Cablevision Systems Corp. gained much notoriety last year by launching a voice-over metro Ethernet service for business customers.

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