Promitel Carries Other Carriers Across the Last Mile

Consistent with the worldwide trend, businesses in Colombia are generating more and more data traffic. The existing poor quality copper infrastructure cannot accommodate this increased payload. Promigas Telecomunicaciones S.A. (Promitel), a subsidiary of Promigas, was created to bridge the Last Mile in Colombian cities. It took advantage of its parent company's gas pipeline infrastructure to install fiber optic cable across the country.

Promitel made its debut as a "Metropolitan Transparent Carrier" in the industrial city of Barranquilla and the tourist city of Cartagena, since an important part of the Promigas network is based in the northern coastal region of Colombia.

 

Promitel installed an STM-16 SDH backbone network with seven main nodes in Barranquilla and five main nodes in Cartagena. For the access, Promitel chose RAD's Last Mile solution offered by Colombian distributor Pro-cibernetica, due to RAD's experience, quality of the network management system, flexibility of the solution and price.

Promitel deployed 20 LRS-24 modem racks filled with dual FOMi-40 and FOMi-E1/T1 modem cards with V.35 and E1 interfaces at the nodes, and fully manageable, standalone FOMi-40 and FOMi-E1/T1 fiber optic modems at the remote sites. "The modular products are very easy to upgrade," says Ing. Alfredo Zuñiga, Technical Manager at Promitel. The RADview-HPOV UNIX-based network management system is used to configure, control and monitor the network.

Promitel is currently offering two services over its metro rings: clear channel from 64 kbps to STM-4, and LAN Last Mile over fiber. It serves most Colombian carriers, including Telefonica, AT&T, ETB 007, Teledifusion, Emtelco, Celcaribe and Bellsouth, among others. "We owe our success to the reliability of the solution, assured by 48 redundant power supplies strategically placed throughout the network, our high level of service, and the wide range of protocols the network supports. In addition, we maintain a strong presence by installing POPs in each carrier's office and in industrial, commercial and financial zones," explains Zuñiga.

Promitel installs and gathers all the Last Mile traffic of the carriers' customers and delivers the traffic to a single point. Currently, the traffic of more than 300 customers flows through the RAD equipment. Promitel is expecting to add another 300 such customers in the next few months. Pro-cibernetica has also provided RAD solutions for different types of customers, using the FOM-8 for low speed financial applications such as automatic teller machines (ATMs), FCD-E1 for adddrop solutions and SPS-2HS for legacy traffic.