My Eye Media
But that’s exactly what city workers have done in a small section of land to the southeast of Bob Hope Airport.
They’ve run high-capacity fiber optic cable through the city’s underground telecommunications network to connect a big company to a small one.
Call it a kind of virtual technology bridge.
The big company is postproduction powerhouse Ascent Media Group, which operates its Digital Media Distribution Center on Hollywood Way, just north of Victory Blvd.
The smaller entity is nearby My Eye Media, LLC, a technical services company providing quality control services to major Hollywood motion picture studios and independent content producers.
Now, a bridge built by the city connects them.
Robert De Leon, Senior Electrical Service Planner for Burbank Water and Power, called the installation routine, a matter of simply splicing new cables into existing ones.
“The substructure was installed years ago to run electricity, so everything is basically in place,” De Leon said. “When a customer comes to us, we look at the path that’s already out there, and we design a way to connect to it.”
The new connection went online Oct. 14. The two companies are using the newfound, virtually unlimited bandwidth to exchange high-source mezzanine files for the purpose of conducting detailed quality control analysis.
According to My Eye Media CEO Michael Kadenacy, the main benefit of accessing the city’s dark fiber network is that it allows both companies to share data and resources with a speed and reliability not achievable with standard broadband technologies.
“One of the biggest obstacles for any distributor or recipient of large, uncompressed files is bandwidth,” Kadenacy said. “Without adequate bandwidth, large file transfers can literally take days, and that’s obviously not practical.”
In most cases, the only other option is to send physical computer drives back and forth, a process with its own technical limitations that often involves unnecessarily putting a vehicle on the city’s already-crowded streets.
De Leon said that by tapping into the City of Burbank’s dark fiber ring, both Ascent Media Group and My Eye Media now have a reliable and high-capacity method of connecting and transferring files.
“The best part of all is that the network is fully scalable,” De Leon said. “So as the volume of their business grows, they can increase the bandwidth, or ‘light more fibers,’ as they say.
“The city recognizes that this technology and infrastructure are key to the future of companies doing business in Burbank, and we’re happy to play a role in making the connection.”