Cogent Communications is expanding the geographic availability of its optical Ethernet service in both the U.S. and Europe. The company today announced new “on-net” connections in the U.S. cities of Baltimore, Cleveland, Portland and St. Louis, as well as the European cities of Copenhagen, Denmark; Nuremberg, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Vigo, Spain; and Porto, Portugal.

“Our network has for some time passed through these markets, but we did not have a point of presence,” said David Schaeffer, Cogent’s CEO. “With the exception of Copenhagen, where we expanded to meet specific customer demand, the locations were already part of our network.”

Cogent has been in an expansion mode for the last few years, both through organic growth, as characterized by this announcement, and through acquisition. The company announced July 6 that research firm Ovum/RHK has named Cogent as the largest provider of Ethernet services in North America based on the number of ports in service, and the third largest revenue producer from Ethernet services as well.

“We have seen very significant traffic growth on our network.” Schaeffer said. “Where we are growing, it is based on actual specific requests from our current customers that have connections from us in other locations and now have asked for these specific connections.”

For example, he said, Cogent’s customers in Lisbon and Madrid had sought the connections in Vigo and Porto.

Most of Cogent’s Ethernet is being driven by Internet access, Schaeffer said. The company gets 53% of its revenues from on-net optical Ethernet services and another 37% for off-net traditional T-1/E-1 and T-3/E-3 service.

In addition, Cogent announced new capacity for its transatlantic connections, to meet expanded customer demand and to provide diversity. The company now has OC-192 connections between New York and Madrid, and between Boston and London, and an OC-48 connection between Washington, D.C., and Frankfurt.