Leveraging Legacy Architecture for Modern Telecom Solutions: Wirewerks at 151 Front St.

151 Front St. West in downtown Toronto is a typical 1950s office tower on the outside with a secret on the inside: the seven-storey building is the country’s largest telecommunications hub.

For competing Telcos, MSOs and ISPs; the hub at 151 Front is an essential ‘Colocation Facility’ where their networks physically interconnect to allow internetwork communications. This happens in the COLO’s ‘Meet-Me-Room’ (MMR); a secure, neutral space where high-speed optical fiber cables arrive from each service provider’s private ‘COLO Suite’ to meet and interconnect.

As with most downtown commercial spaces, rents are high and space is limited. One of Rogers’ challenges in equipping their private COLO Suite at 151 Front was to take advantage of literally every square inch of space within the Suite for equipment and cabling to maximize capacity and minimize costs. The presence of 50s-era structural elements within their COLO Suite created unusable spaces that restricted Rogers’ from meeting their capacity and cost goals.

The compact design, features and capacity of the Wirewerks NextSTEP™ Wall Mount Enclosure allowed Rogers equipment engineering specialists to reclaim the previously unused surfaces of structural columns within their COLO Suite to manage their fiber cable runs to the remote MMR. To complete the solution, Rogers also chose NextSTEP Ribbon Fiber Splice Tray Modules, and Wirewerks 144F Ribbon Multi-Push On (MPO) Assemblies; custom-built to exact lengths to eliminate slack management issues at either end.

In this application, each NextSTEP Wall Mount houses six NextSTEP Ribbon Fiber Splice Tray Modules, with each module managing two 12F ribbon cables for a total capacity of 144F per enclosure. Rogers planners anticipate deploying additional NextSTEP Wall Mount Enclosures populated with a mix of NextSTEP Splice Tray Modules and NextSTEP Patch Modules to accommodate future growth and additional applications within their COLO Suite.

Rogers selected Wirewerks for our expertise and customer support along with our broad selection of infrastructure components, rapid delivery of custom cable assemblies, and our relentless commitment to quality and performance in all our products and solutions.

Rogers equipment engineering specialists selected the NextSTEP Wall Mount Enclosure for its:

• Compact overall dimensions and footprint
• Capacity
• Functional design
• Ease of installation
• Bottom-hinged door and shallow door swing
• Flexibility of multiple cable entry points
• Integrated cable management features
• Precision engineering and quality manufacturing