Level 3 Communications remained on the acquisition path Monday, announcing a deal to purchase Looking Glass Networks Inc. for $165 million .

The deal consists of $87 million in Level 3 shares and $9 million in cash. Level 3 will also assume $69 million in Looking Glass liabilities.

Oak Brook, Ill.-based Looking Glass is a privately held facilities-based provider of metropolitan transport services. It provides data transport services, including SONET/SDH, wavelength and Ethernet, as well as dark fiber and "carrier-neutral" colocation services. Its network is comprised of 2,000 route miles serving major metros such as Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C.

Looking Glass has lit fiber connected to about 215 buildings, and dark fiber linked to another 250 buildings. The company is slated to generate between $75 million to $80 million of revenues in 2006, 25 percent more than what it posted in 2005.

Level 3 said the acquisition will beef up its recently-announced Metro Services business unit. The deal also complements Level 3's recent acquisitions of Progress Telecom, ICG and the still-pending buy of TelCove Inc. The string of deals will boost the number of traffic aggregation points connected to Level 3 fiber to 5,100 in the U.S. and 5,300 internationally.