News and Events

April 1, 2016 – Sioux Falls, SD: The Midco® Business network and team members have received additional certifications from the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), a global industry alliance that serves as the defining body for carrier Ethernet. Midco Business delivers carrier Ethernet services to enterprises and corporations, carriers, wholesale Internet providers and government entities.

“When these sets of customers know and recognize that our network meets these industry standards, they can rest assured that they’re connected to an innovative network that’s at the top of its class,” says Scott Smidt, VP of Business Engineering and Operations at Midco. “Our engineering team has made a commitment to not only building and maintaining this network, but also spending more than 800 hours testing the network against the stringent MEF network standards.”

Recently, the network earned E-LAN certifications – and now meets the following MEF Carrier Ethernet (CE) 2.0 standards:

• E-LAN (EP-LAN and EVP-LAN) 
• E-Line (EP-Line and EVP-Line)
• E-Access (EPL and EVPL)

In 2013, the Midco Business network became the region’s first MEF-certified CE 1.0 network. Midco Business’ service certifications are noted on the MEF website.

In addition, five Midco engineering and network support staff devoted a cumulative 900 hours of studying and testing for MEF’s standards for carrier Ethernet 2.0 professionals. They recently joined two other Midco colleagues in earning the MEF Carrier Ethernet Certified Professional (CECP) designation.

The Northern Plains Network™ is wholly owned, operated and engineered by Midco. The 100% fiber network stretches 8,400 core network route miles, and offers 99.999% reliability and scalability up to eight terabits per second.

About the MEF

The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) is the driving force enabling agile, assured and orchestrated Third Network services for the digital economy and the hyper-connected world, with user-directed control over network resources and cloud connectivity. Optimized for real-time, QoS-enabled, secured traffic and integration of value-added network functions-as-a-service, Third Network services are delivered over automated, virtualized, and interconnected networks globally powered by LSO, SDN, and NFV.

The MEF leverages its global 200+ network operators and technology vendor community, builds upon the robust $80 billion Carrier Ethernet market, and provides a practical evolution to the Third Network with LSO, SDN, and NFV implementations that build upon a CE 2.0 foundation. 

The MEF has established a technical and implementation framework that includes architecture, information models, service definitions, operational processes, open source community, and certification programs. MEF work is conducted internally and – under the guidance of the MEF UNITE program – in collaboration with global standards organizations and open source projects.