Comment Articles

What value are metropolitan area networks if everyone's gone to the sticks

Guy Kewney AnchorDesk

Published: 08 Oct 2001 15:19 BST

Suppose I arrived at your office, and tried to sell you a gigabit Ethernet connection to the outside world. How would you use it? What would you actually do with it?

For me, the excitement would be the prospect of having a local gigabit hub in my street, with 10 megabit Ethernet connections to an Internet Service provider in every house. But that, it seems, it not going to happen for years. And anyway, it's not what I should be excited about.

According to a panel of experts here at a NetEvents seminar, if you really understood this business, you would become excited and enthusiastic about the possibility of becoming part of a "metropolitan area network" or MAN. It would, they say, enable you to have several offices around town, with all the workers linked together as quickly and efficiently as if they were all in the same room on the top floor of your prestige corporate headquarters in the financial district.

I'm sure I'm missing something here. Long before September 11th, it was surely obvious that big, prestige headquarters buildings in financial districts were being abandoned, in all the world's major cities? Long before BT decided to reduce its corporate debt by selling off 2 bn pounds worth of big, prestige headquarters buildings it was clear that there were no more tall buildings with PAN AM or Coca Cola or Ford written on the top floor in 20-foot high letters, wasn't it? And that all the big cost-conscious organisations were moving to rural business parks in small towns where they were welcome as an employer, rather than trying to recruit urban commuters who resented having to travel into the smoky downtown business area every day?

And surely, since September 11th, not only are corporates even more aware than ever of the need to have their data spread across several business sites, but they are now even more sensitive about having too many employees in one city?