Reprinted from: http://www.cogentco.com/News/news_11152001.htm

Cogent Communications Completes Service Rollout to 20 Cities

While Simultaneously Completing Backbone Capacity Expansion to 80 Gbps.

WASHINGTON, D.C. November 15, 2001 --

Cogent Communications, Inc., a Tier One, next-generation optical ISP, today marked its one-year anniversary of lighting up its own national network by announcing completion of Cogent's planned network rollout to 20 U.S cities. Simultaneous to the rollout, Cogent completed a bandwidth expansion across its entire network from 10 Gbps to 80 Gbps, creating the nation's largest IP backbone.

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I don't think they're tier one yet... but apparently they now consider themselves to be. Does anyone know what the technical defination or qualifications of a tier one is -- or is it just something that someone made up along away?

Originally, the tier 1 ISPs ran the "core" networks of the internet, back when everything was managed by the government. Post-deregulation, the term has lost meaning. Perhaps the only accurate definition would be

tier one n. The company on behalf of which a press release is being written.

Tier 1 means they buy no transit, and only peer.
Tier 2 buys transit, but can also peer.