Roundup: Fiberlight, The Planet, Qwest

Here's a roundup of some of Monday's headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

• FiberLight raises $13 million from CoBank. Optical transport provider FiberLight announced Monday it has raised $13 million from CoBank in the company's first ever debt offering in the capital markets. The debt is comprised of a $10 million note and a $3 million revolving line of credit. FiberLight recently completed the extension of its optical network to Terremark's NAP of the Capitol Region data center in Culpepper, Virginia. "We want to continue to grow in a responsible way that not only shows the top line compounding 20% annually
  but has a similar growth in our EBITDA", said FiberLight President Kevin B. Coyne. FiberLight provides Ethernet, wavelengths, IP, SONET, and dark fiber optical transport network solutions to telecom carriers, government, enterprise, content providers and web-centric businesses.
• The Planet reports second quarter results. IT Hosting provider The Planet announced several second quarter highlights for the quarter ending July 31, 2009. Chairman and CEO Douglas J. Erwin said "We continue to see the most significant revenue growth from both our largest customers and our complex infrastructure solutions, which include virtual and private racks." The Planet reported solid EBITDA performance in the 30 percentrange and a very strong cash flow quarter. One thousand new customers were added in the first quarter and Netcraft reveals that The Planet hosts 18.5 million web sites. The company hosted a ribbon-cutting for its new 106,000 square foot data center in the north Dallas suburb of Plano during the quarter.

NASA selects Qwest to upgrade its network. NASA has awarded a $14.2 million contract to Qwest Government Services, a subsidiary of Qwest Communications. The contract will upgrade the federal agency's corporate backbone circuits from 2.5 Gbps to 10Gbps. The 8 year term will use Qwest's OWS (Optical Wave Services) approach and will provide corporate wide area network transport for NASA email, collaboration, and scientific, financial and business applications for facilities around the world. The contract was made under Qwest's U.S. General Services Administration's Networx Universal contract.