Telecom Industry News

Comptel 2010: Quality, not price, is job one for wholesaler operators

Sean Buckley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:10:26 -0400

After finally landing Monday night in Nashville, Tn., which caused me to miss a day's worth of meetings due to poor weather in Massachusetts, I found my way on to the COMPTEL Plus Spring show floor where I met with some heavy hitter executives in the wholesale carrier segment.

Coming off one of the worst economic recessions since the Depression, there was a sense of optimism in the air as all of the wholesale industry segments have set their sights on new opportunities, including IP data and, of course, wireless backhaul. Even with all of this optimism, I do think what will set apart one wholesale provider from the other besides size and scale won't be price, but customer experience and quality.

I say this because the show featured not only your usual suspect incumbent wholesalers (CenturyLink, Qwest, Sprint, and Verizon), but a growing list of competitive wholesalers (Covad, FiberLight, nitel, TTM, and TowerCloud) that are eager to take away business from the incumbents.

While you would think that all this new competition would make the incumbents scared, they actually see it as an opportunity. CenturyLink, for one, believes that what they are going to compete on is not price, but quality and customer experience.

"We have to have a differentiator and frankly quality is what sets us apart," said Bill Cheek, President of CenturyLink Wholesale markets. "I like to think of it this way: when you get to a small company we have resources that they don't have. As an incumbent, we can bring in technicians from other parts of the country if we have a hurricane hit whereas some of the smaller players that are focused on one region don't have."

Certainly, there are a lot of pieces a wholesaler has to put in place to maintain quality. Not only does the supplier have to satisfy the service provider customer, but also the end user. This is even more critical if the end-user is an enterprise customer or wireless carrier whose business depends on the connectivity or service they get and does not want to get into a finger pointing dispute over whose fault it was that the service went down.

A wholesaler's drive to maintain quality is nothing new. What customers loved in the old SONET and then later in the ATM, Frame Relay worlds was that whether you were a wholesaler selling service to another operator or to an enterprise was these services came with quality of service (QoS) and class of service (CoS) parameters and penalties if the operator failed to meet certain thresholds.

I think the challenge now is to apply these concepts to the new emerging Ethernet and IP worlds. Help is on the way via the Metro Ethernet Forum's MEF 26 specification, which defines phase one of the External Network to Network Interface (ENNI). The standard is designed to simplify the process service providers take to establish peering arrangements with other carriers when they go outside of their respective network regions to expand their Ethernet footprint.

All of this creates both a challenge and opportunity for wholesale operators. For the incumbent, it's an opportunity to show their customers that if you come to us we can not only give you the geographic scale you need, but a dedicated team that can rise to the occasion to resolve issues if a major disaster strikes or an outage occurs. At the same time, I think smaller regional wholesale players (cable, wireless specialists and regional wholesalers) can also sell themselves on their nimble nature and the fact that they can also respond quickly to needs.

Regardless of the size of the company, those carriers that can keep up service continuity and respond when there is a problem are the ones that will succeed in the eyes of their customers.--Sean

AT&T asks customers to adopt paperless billing

Sean Buckley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:38:04 -0400

AT&T is asking its customer base to help it reach the goal of converting a million accounts to paperless billing through its PayItGreen initiative.

To show its seriousness about its PayItGreen paperless billing initiative, AT&T has launched a promotion with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant a tree for every customer that opts for paperless billing.

The telecom giant estimates that if one million customers converted to paperless billing, it could help save 400,000 pounds of paper and avert up to six million pounds of greenhouse gases. What's more, AT&T says that the paperless goal would also prevent four million gallons of waste water from being discharged into waterways annually.

For more:
- see this Environmental Leader article

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Sprint Wholesale helps competitors differentiate with wireless

Sean Buckley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:20:14 -0400

If you're a traditional CLEC or cable operator looking to differentiate your offerings beyond price and standard wireline voice and data services, Sprint Wholesale says why not add wireless to your product set? Offered in conjunction with Telespree Communications, Sprint has introduced its Mobile Broadband On Demand prepaid wireless data product for its wholesale partner customers.

Available in either a standalone product or packaged with back office services, the product which can be activated over-the-air, can cater either to traditional MVNO wireless partners or CLECs that provide services to a variety of vertical industry segments including rental car companies, airport kiosks, hotels and retail stores.

Unlike traditional wireless contracts that lock users into a certain amount of minutes or time each month, the Mobile Broadband on Demand service allows customers to provide on-demand of prepaid mobile broadband services on a by the day, week, month or even by the megabyte.

As Dan Dooley, president of Sprint Wholesale Solutions sees it, offering wholesale wireless services could help its traditional wireline customers find another means to differentiate.

"What we had is a lot of our resellers and agents say we have MPLS networks with all of our customers, but we're tapped out and we can't go anywhere with that," Dooley said. "What we're saying is go beyond that and fire the LEC and put their voice over the MPLS network or sell them a wireless data card that can attach to that MPLS network."

For more:
- see the release here

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Verizon sues Cablevision over set-top box patents

Sean Buckley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:44:10 -0400

Verizon's ongoing rivalry with New York-based Cablevision became even more contentious this week as the telco, which has been aggressively attacking the MSO's hometown New York market with FTTP services, filed a patent-infringement case with the U.S. International Trade Commission to prevent Cablevision from supplying certain set-top boxes to their subscribers.

The lawsuit alleges that Cablevision is violating five of Verizon's digital set-top box patents that enable users to download video, check, play games, check weather and conduct social networking. Verizon also filed another lawsuit in Delaware asking for monetary damages. Each of the lawsuits are focused on preventing Cablevision from selling these certain set-top boxes, which Verizon had earlier agreed to license to Cablevision.

Since Verizon started to aggressively expand its FiOS presence in New York, its rivalry with dominant cable MSO Cablevision has continued to mount with the latest battle centered around access to HD content on Cablevisoin's MSG network.

For more:
- CED has this article

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Telmex could face government penalty

Sean Buckley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:57:48 -0400

Once again Carlos Slim's Telmex is coming under fire. This time the Mexican government is investigating allegations that Telmex had prevented smaller competitive service providers from connecting to its network.

Blocking competitors from its network is the tip of the iceberg. The telecom giant is also at odds with the state because it refused to supply information about its network to the government and competitors.

At this point, the government has yet to provide how large the fine would be or when it would make a final decision about Telmex's actions. This is not the first time Telmex has faced government scrutiny for anti-competitive actions. Last September, the Federal Competition Commission (CFC), Mexico's antitrust commission, accused Telmex of anti-trust practices.

For more:
- Telegeography has this article

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MoCA wants to tap into Europe's home network market

Sean Buckley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:15:14 -0400

Thanks to healthy deployments by Verizon for its FiOS home networking connections, Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) has enjoyed good success in the U.S. market with an estimated 30 million active units.

However compelling its success in the states has been, MoCA advocates believe they can replicate their success in Europe. Finding a sizeable audience in Europe for MoCA home networking, which leverages a home's existing coax cable won't be easy. Unlike the U.S., coax is not as plentiful in European homes so up till now the dominant 'no new wires' home networking approaches have been either powerline or HomePNA.

What's making the MoCA camp so confident about its chances in Europe is a new IMS Research study. While France and the Netherlands had less than two coax connections per home, the study revealed that homes in Poland and the U.K. had two or more coax connections.

For more
- see the release here
- Light Reading Cable has this perspective

Rumor mill: Ericsson could move on LG-Nortel stake

Sean Buckley — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:35:58 -0400

Having successfully bought out Nortel's CDMA/LTE and North American GSM assets, it appears that Ericsson is ready to strike a deal for a big piece of LG-Nortel joint venture. The Seoul Economic Daily reported yesterday that Ericsson is ready to shell out money for a controlling stake in the LG-Nortel joint venture, one of the remaining pieces left to purchase in Nortel's bargain basement asset sale.

Right now, Nortel holds a 50 percent-plus-one-share stake in the LG-Nortel venture, while LG Electronics owns the remaining stake. Since May 2009, Nortel has been searching for a potential buyer of its stake in the venture.

Last year, LG-Nortel reported $644 million in revenues from the sale of IP phones, UC platforms, VoIP platforms and WDM-PON fiber-to-the-home products.

Yesterday, LG broke its silence and said that reports of Nortel selling its stake in the venture were premature. "No schedule or partner has been decided for the moment," LG spokesman Kim Gyeong Whan said in response to an Electronic Times report that Ericsson AB may acquire a controlling 50 percent-plus-one-share stake in LG-Nortel Co.

For more:
- Light Reading Europe has this article
- Bloomberg article says no deal has been set

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Ohio loosens up wireline regulations

Sean Buckley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:31:04 -0400

Soon wireline operators might have an easier time operating in Ohio as the Ohio House of Representatives approved a bill that will ease up regulations on traditional wireline service providers.

Not surprisingly, AT&T, which provides phone and data service in Ohio, applauded the move. By passing this legislation, AT&T argues that it will be able to ramp up new network investments in Ohio to more effectively compete with cable operators who do not have to abide the same regulatory rules to provide phone service.

"If we get rid of some of the unnecessary regulatory risk and cost, I have 100 percent confidence that we'll see jobs, we'll see investment and see economic development that will flow from that," said Tom Pelto, president of AT&T in Ohio.

However, not everyone is happy with the bill. Even though the bill could provide some new benefits for end-customers, area consumer advocates fear that it could hinder regulations that were put in place to provide affordable prices and reliable phone service. The Ohio Consumers' Counsel, which has joined forces with 45 consumer groups in opposition of the bill, is concerned that what has been proposed won't provide a lot of protections to consumers.

"We were pleased that the final bill included significant consumer benefits," said Ohio Consumers' Counsel Janine Migden-Ostrander in a statement. "But we are deeply disappointed that this bill erodes decades of consumer protections for the vast majority of telephone customers: those with bundles and packages of service."

For more:
- The Plain Dealer has this article

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Comcast wraps acquisition of Cimco

Sean Buckley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:09:56 -0400

With the FCC's conditional approval in place, Comcast can now proceed to the checkout counter with its purchase of Chicago-based CLEC Cimco Communications.

While Comcast has been targeting small to medium businesses (1-20 employees) with DOCSIS-based services, the acquisition of Cimco enables it to advance into the mid-sized business service market with an initial drive in the Chicago-land area.

The Cimco deal, which was originally announced last October, appears to be part of an ongoing acquisition strategy that Comcast has set itself on to expand its business prowess. Not long after it reached a deal to buy Cimco, Comcast entered into an agreement to buy New Global Telecom.

One of the "conditions" that the FCC put on the deal was that while Comcast gets the keys to Cimco's operations, it can't have access to its Detroit properties. The reason is that the FCC has rules in place that prevent a cable operator from acquiring more than a 10 percent financial interest in any local exchange carrier providing phone service in the cable operator's franchise area. When it approved the Cimco deal, the FCC waived that rule for Cimco territories except Detroit. However, if Comcast can get the Detroit Local Franchising Authority to give their approval then the FCC will give a similar waiver.

And while it's possible the Detroit LFA will say no to the waiver, the bigger picture here is that it signifies Comcast's growing presence as a new player in the competitive business telecom market segment.

For more:
- LightReadingCable has this article

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Infonetics: PON equipment revenue rose in Q4 09

Sean Buckley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:43:12 -0400

Fueled by aggressive Fiber to the Business (FTTB) deployments in the Chinese telecom market, the passive optical networking (PON) equipment market surpassed the $2 billion mark for the first time. According to Infonetics Research's Q409 PON and FTTH Equipment and Subscribers and Broadband Aggregation Hardware and Subscribers market share and forecast reports, worldwide PON equipment revenue rose to $2.18 billion, a 35 percent increase over Q4 09.

On a worldwide scale, PON equipment revenue jumped 26 percent sequentially in Q4 09, a factor it attributes to increased spending on Ethernet PON (EPON) equipment in China. At the same time, GPON also fared well as China Mobile, China Telecom and BSNL all stepped up their respective deployments during the fourth quarter.

Outside of Asia-Pacific, Infonetics forecasts that tier 3 service providers that win broadband stimulus award grants will help to grow the Ethernet FTTH market in 2010. A big contributor to this trend will be Google's ambitious 1 Gbps-capable open access network drive.

In a similar manner, China continues to fuel the growth of the Multi Service Access Platform (MSAP) market. Led by Huawei and ZTE, broadband aggregation DSL ports increased 11 percent to 92 million in 2009. At the same time, the lower cost of ADSL ports used in FTTB deployments drove revenues down 15 percent to $3.7 billion.

For more:
- see the release here

Telstra break up could be in peril

Sean Buckley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:13:19 -0400

Australia's desire to split up the country's incumbent service provider Telstra continues to fade from reality as the country's Greens political party appears to be against the mandate.

Just how influential is the Greens party? Because the Greens sometimes have the deciding vote in the upper house Senate, they could shoot down the Australian government's proposed telecom reform plans that would break up Telstra's wireline network and use it to fund its $39 billion National Broadband Network (NBN). Lack of support to break up Telstra is being greeted favorably by the market as Telstra's stock rose four percent.

One of the reasons that the Greens aren't saying yes to the break up yet is because Communications Minister Stephen Conroy would not share a study on the design of the NBN. Although supportive of the NBN concept, the Senators want to see the study before making a final decision.

"It's a refusal to comply with an order for the production of documents. On a project of this scale, that's a very serious thing for the minister to do," Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said in a Reuters' article. "I would say that with the amount of bad faith that's been generated in this debate so far, it's a really foolhardy move."

For more:
- Reuters has this article

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West Virginia continues to protest Verizon-Frontier deal

Sean Buckley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:38:27 -0400

Little more than a week after an Illinois judge suggested that state regulators should block Verizon's wireline asset sale to Frontier, 5,000 West Virginians have signed a petition asking the state's Public Service Commission to reject the deal.

Backing the petition is a number of consumer and union groups, including the Communications Workers of America (CWA), West Virginia Citizen Action Group, The Association of American Retired Persons (AARP).

Along with some early protests in Oregon, Washington State, and more recently Illinois, West Virginia's consumer advocates and unions have been vocal in their opposition of the impending deal since it was originally announced last May. And it appears that their efforts are gaining momentum as more West Virginia organizations and politicians have also joined them in expressing their concerns on what effect the transaction will have on current telephone workers and consumers.

"As of March 1 we had more than 80 West Virginia legislators who submitted letters of opposition and concern over this deal to the PSC," Harris said. "Then you have the county commissions, city leaders, various organizations and 5,000 members of the public who are also voicing strong opposition to the deal. Simply put, the public opposition has become a force to be reckoned with."

For more:
- HuntingtonNews has this article

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BT hits the triple-play button

Sean Buckley — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:57:22 -0400

BT this week launched a series of triple play offerings that incorporate its traditional landline voice, broadband data and IPTV. These triple play offerings come after U.K. regulator Ofcom lifted restrictions on BT in September to offer bundled service packages.

For a limited time, BT will offer its bundled packages at a discounted price. At the high-end, BT customers can bundle unlimited wireline geographic calls, up to 20 Mbps of broadband and Vision Gold Value IPTV service for $74.16 per month. During the introductory three-month period, consumers will only have to pay $55 a month.

While they would not reveal exact dates, John Petter, managing director of BT's Consumer Division said that there "will be many more bundled offers to come and customers can only benefit."

For more:
- Telegeography has this article

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Comptel 2010: Broadview, Actelis strengthen their EFM ties

Sean Buckley — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:34:18 -0400

Broadview Networks' expansion of its Ethernet over Copper (EoC) service across its Northeast metro footprint shows again that copper, while certainly a legacy technology, still has plenty to offer as a near-term Ethernet delivery strategy for competitive providers that can't make a business case for fiber.

Business customers can either bundle Broadview's EoC service with its FrontLine MPLS, SIP Trunking and OfficeSuite service or as a standalone ZOOM Internet access service. Delivered over Actelis' EoC gear, SMB customers can choose symmetrical speeds that can scale as low as 3 Mbps and up to 30 Mbps.

Even though fiber is the optimal solution for Ethernet, the reality is that "last mile" fiber reaches only 22.9 percent of U.S. business sites, meaning that fiber-based Ethernet services are typically out of reach for most SMB customers. For many CLECs, providing EoC services has been either a strategy to augment their fiber-based offerings or, in the case of Broadview, a more cost effective near-term strategy to deliver Ethernet services to a market that remains underserved by incumbent carrier fiber-based offerings.

Even though there have not been any reports of service impacts, the CLEC's ability to gain access to copper facilities has become a controversial issue in recent years as many ILECs have begun to retire copper lines in favor of fiber. And while other CLECs such as CBeyond want access to ILEC fiber, for Broadview EoC will continue to address a sweet spot of SMBs that can't afford the jump to a DS-3 service or even another T1 circut, but desire the QoS/CoS attributes that DSL and cable modem service lack.

For more:
- see the release here

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Network Test Automation Forum addresses time to market pressures

Sean Buckley — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:34:35 -0400

A coalition of service providers, network infrastructure and testing vendors joined forces to launch the Network Test Automation Forum (NTAF), an organization centered on promoting interoperability between test tools and simplifying lab automation efforts for both network equipment providers and their service provider customers.

Initial members of the NTAF include a representatives from the service provider community (BT and Verizon), traditional equipment (Cisco and Ericsson) and of course test/measurement (BreakingPoint Systems, Empirix, EXFO, Fanfare Software, Ixia, JDSU, and Spirent Communications) segments.

Traditionally, vendor and even service provider testing environments were done in a proprietary and standalone fashion, a process that would require months of testing before a product or service could be released into the market. NTAF aims to break that cycle with an open approach that encourages equipment vendors to work more closely with their respective service provider and network equipment provider (NEP) customers to create an open and advanced automation framework. By adopting multi-vendor technical architectures for test automation systems, test engineers and lab managers will be able to shorten the window of time to release new products and services.

For more:
- see the release here (pdf)

NTCA: FCC's broadband plan needs tweaking

Sean Buckley — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:07:19 -0400

When the FCC's broadband plan was submitted to Congress yesterday many of the industry associations and large service providers praised the plan, but the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA) thinks that the plan needs some revisions to truly help its rural telco constituency expand broadband service availability.

While the NTCA supports the FCC's broadband plan, including realigning the focus of the Universal Service Fund (USF) on broadband investment, the organization is concerned that the plan does not address the high cost of building out broadband networks in rural areas.

At issue is the lack of a provision in the plan that would enable rural broadband operators to recover lawful costs related to universal service and intercarrier compensation, carrier of last resort obligation costs, and the suggestion that rate-of-return regulation for every service provider regardless of size.

Michael E. Brunner, NTCA's Chief Executive Officer believes that these particular tenets in the FCC's plan would actually stunt rural broadband growth. "Collectively, these aspects of the plan would discourage rural investment and would make it unlikely that affordable broadband services could be further deployed and maintained in many high-cost rural areas," Brunner said in a release.

For more:
- see the release here

Level 3 ups its domestic switched Ethernet ante

Sean Buckley — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:12:28 -0400

Level 3 is responding to its business and carrier customer's ongoing demand for Ethernet by expanding the number of Ethernet switches on its U.S. network by nearly 400 percent.

In this latest phase of its Ethernet Expansion program, Level 3 hopes to achieve two goals: eliminate the need for backhauling switched metro Ethernet applications in addition to providing backhaul for Internet or voice services.

"This expanded architecture enables Level 3 to address a significantly broader set of enterprise and wholesale customer requirements for Ethernet services," said Sureel Choksi, chief marketing officer for Level 3.

Despite seeing widened financial losses in Q4 09--an issue Level 3 attributes to the down economy--the service provider Ethernet network expansion reflects the need to keep up with increased spending by its enterprise and government customers. Proof of the slight customer spending uptick came earlier this month when the Department of State awarded Level 3 with a data networking contract under the General Service Administration's (GSA) Washington Interagency Telecommunications Services (WITS 3) contract.

For more:
- see the release here

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COMPTEL appoints new board members

Sean Buckley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:15:07 -0400

COMPTEL has named 13 companies to serve on its board for the two-year 2010-2012 term. The election of these board members, which took place during the industry association's annual meeting, will combine these new board members with 15 other members who are in the midst of serving their current two-year (2009-2011) terms.

Leading Comptel's board is Joe Ambersley, a founding officer of PAETEC Communications, who was reelected to his second consecutive term as the organization's chairman. The board reelected Julia Strow, co-founder of Cbeyond, as vice chairman, and Jim Butman, TDS Metrocom's group president of marketing, sales and customer operations, as treasurer.

COMPTEL also named four at-large members to its executive committee: Dan Dooley, president of Sprint Wholesale Solutions; J. Sherman Henderson III, president and CEO of Lightyear Network Solutions; Deborah Ward, CEO of TSI; and Jerry Watts, vice president of Government and Industry Affairs at Deltacom.

For more:
- Phone+ has this article

FairPoint names Verizon veteran as CIO

Sean Buckley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:55:52 -0400

As FairPoint continues down its path to recovery, the troubled service provider has named 16-year telecom veteran Kathleen McLean as its Chief Information Officer.

Known for her experience in using process excellence and information technology to achieve business objectives, McLean most recently served as senior vice president of Customer Service for Verizon Partner Solutions. In that role, she led a 9,000-person staff that was responsible for ordering, provisioning and maintaining voice, data and IP-based services for business and wholesale carrier customers.

McLean took up residence at Verizon's IT organization in 1998 as the VP of architecture and technology where she led the development of the service provider's Internet application and automated wholesale processes and systems.

"Her expertise will be instrumental in helping FairPoint accelerate the systems and process improvements we already have underway. And, as the organization matures, she will establish a strategy for effectively responding to the IT needs of the company," says David L. Hauser, Chairman and CEO of FairPoint in a release.

For more:
- see the release here

Comptel 2010: Arbinet continues carrier transformation

Sean Buckley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:06:39 -0400

As Arbinet continues to transform itself from its role of traditional exchange house to traditional service provider, it has launched a new series of routing capabilities for its carrier service customers.

Arbinet's customer-based Routingsm will enable its service provider or carrier customers to choose from various service levels for each destination on a route-by-route basis over a single trunk group. For example, a carrier can choose routes with guaranteed CLI delivery and Roaming Number (MSRN) support from Arbient's Premium Mobile routing table for destination where customers need high QoS and advanced features.

According to Andrew Baird, product manager for Arbinet, the new approach is more efficient because it eliminates the need to have a trunk group for each type of traffic. "This approach offers a cost savings because you don't have to maintain multiple trunk groups per carrier," he said in an interview with Light Reading. "Our wholesale customers connect to between two and five different carriers, so they don't have to use multi-trunk groups per carrier."

Another piece of Arbinet's ongoing transformation will be a continued focus on mobile operators. Following the release of its Premium Mobile service last week, Arbinet plans to launch a Mobile Exchange offering for wireless operators sometime this year.

For more:
- see the release here
- Light Reading also has this article

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FCC's broadband plan calls for higher broadband speeds, USF reform

Sean Buckley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:34:10 -0400

The FCC's long-awaited national broadband plan--which will finally be released today to Congress with a focus on expanding broadband network speeds, redirecting the Universal Fund (USF) and Intercarrier Compensation--has taken center stage at this week's Comptel trade show in Nashville, Tn.

On the broadband front, the FCC wants to ensure that residential customers can get access to an average of 4 Mbps speeds and that anchor institutions (schools, libraries and hospitals) can get 1 Gbps speeds. This initial broadband action plan also incorporates Julius Genachowski's "100 Squared Initiative" to deliver 100 Mbps to 100 million homes. A newly modified goal will set an asymmetric speed of 100 Mbps/50 Mbps.

To achieve its broadband speed goals, Sharon Gillett, Wireline Competition bureau chief for the FCC, told Comptel attendees yesterday that the FCC is calling for a phased migration of the Universal Service Fund (USF), which is currently slated to provide subsidies to smaller carriers for voice services, to focus on broadband services. According to a report in Light Reading, Gillett said the plan would redirect the amount of USF money distributed "based on the gap between revenues and costs in areas that don't have broadband, or areas that need ongoing support to keep the broadband they have."

Gillett added that the FCC's long-term plan would be to "shift about $16 billion over 10 years into explicit support for broadband, and by the end of 10 years, we are supporting only broadband networks."

Intercarrier compensation will also be subject to a phased migration. The broadband plan has put in place a three-phased blueprint to redirect intercarrier compensation over 10 years from per-minute rates toward a lower flat-rate. This three-phased blueprint will not only include cost-recovery for smaller independent service providers that rely on intercarrier compensation, but it would also redirect compensation away from long-distance voice services.

For more:
- Connected Planet has this article
- Reuters also has this coverage
- Light Reading also has this analysis

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Comptel 2010: Matrix Telecom snaps up Excel Telecommunications

Sean Buckley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:38:35 -0400

Matrix Telecom has gone shopping this week, and its latest find is to buy Irving-based Excel Telecommunications from Denham Capital.

Although financial details were not revealed, Matrix's President and CEO Chuck Taylor said that the acquisition is part of an overall company strategy to expand "its domestic and international wholesale voice offering."

So what specifically does Matrix get out of the deal then? In addition to gaining access to Excel's residential, business and wholesale carrier customers, the acquisition will help Matrix expand its network coverage with complementary assets, a Veraz soft-switching platform, back-office technologies and its workforce.

This being the third acquisition it has made in four years, Matrix is no stranger to the acquisition game. In addition to buying Excel, Matrix acquired Global Crossing's small to medium business (SMB) group in 2006 as well as pieces of the former Trinsic Communications in 2007.

For more:
- see the release here

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Comptel 2010: XO plays international network matchmaker

Sean Buckley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:58:40 -0400

XO continues to make progress with its international market expansion goals, and the debut of its International Customer Referral Program, which enables international service providers to give their customers access to XO's U.S. service portfolio, is another step in that direction.

Posing itself as a matchmaker for wholesale operators looking to connect into the U.S., service providers that sign up on XO's program will be able to get access to its IP-based transport services (IP/VPNs) and 19,000-mile fiber network. Already, the idea is catching on as Hong Kong-based business consulting firm CAST has signed onto the XO program and will be able to refer international carriers that want to reach into the U.S. to XO.

Ernie Ortega, President of Carrier Services for XO said that the new program is a reciprocal relationship that "allows us easier access to overseas telecom companies, thereby expanding international awareness of XO services," while "our referral customers will enjoy access to the robust XO product portfolio of U.S. network service offerings that they can now seamlessly provide to their customers."

The customer referral program is just one of many initiatives XO has taken to expand its domestic, European and South American network presence. In the U.S., XO expanded its fiber network reach into the Inland Empire region in Southern California. Then, on the international front, XO increased its Latin American connectivity options with a new U.S.-Mexico gateway and it partnered with Hibernia Atlantic to expand its European presence.

For more:
- see the release here
- xChange has this article

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Comptel 2010: Mediacom will phase out Sprint VoIP relationship

Sean Buckley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:21:10 -0400

Sprint's wholesale group took another hit this week as Mediacom Communications--the seventh largest U.S. cable operator--has decided to take its IP voice service operations in-house.

Since 2004, Sprint had been taking care of Mediacom's VoIP service needs, including routing PSTN traffic, E911 in addition to assisting local number portability (LNP) and long-distance traffic carriage.

At this point, Mediacom is not revealing any details about when or how it will transition off the Sprint network. "We have initiated a project to transition these services in-house, beginning in 2010," said Mediacom in a 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 5, 2010.

Coming barely a week after Time Warner Cable said it would take charge of its voice operations, the eventual loss of Mediacom is another blow to Sprint Wholesale. The past year overall has not been easy for Sprint Wholesale. While it did report that it saw a "slight increase" in cable VoIP subscribers, Q4 voice revenue declined to $611 million from $648 million in Q3 09.

For more:
- LightReading Cable has this article

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Goodbye Tyco Telecom, hello TE SubCom

Sean Buckley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:21:34 -0400

Tyco Telecommunications may have earned the reputation as the name you know in the undersea cabling systems, but now that name is going to change to Tyco Electronics Subsea Communications (TE SubCom).

David Coughlan, CEO of TE SubCom, said that while changing the company name "enables us to more closely align ourselves with our parent company," the management team will stay the same and it will continue to maintain its existing headquarters, research and development laboratories, manufacturing, ships and depots.

With the name change complete, TE SubCom will set forth on putting its stamp on various undersea cable projects in Asia, the Mid-East and North Atlantic. During 2009, TE SubCom participated in a number of high profile submarine cabling projects, including PPC-1 (Pipe Telecom), TGN-Intra Asia (Tata Communications), and the SEA Cable System (SEACOM).

For more:
- see the release here

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Stimulating carrier Ethernet sales

Sean Buckley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:50:50 -0400

By Michael Kennedy

Carrier Ethernet retail service sales have lagged behind sales forecasts and projections. The Carrier Ethernet exchange concept being pioneered by CENX, Inc. should stimulate retail service sales and help retail Carrier Ethernet service offerings realize their potential.

The Carrier Ethernet concept was developed by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) about eight years ago as a vehicle for establishing a standardized service offering independent of specific vendor or service provider implementations. The MEF's objective was to create an open but standardized offering to accelerate sales as was done for successful products such as VHF video tape and "Wintel" computers, and to avoid less successful proprietary products such as Sony Betamax video tape and Apple Macintosh computers.

Carrier Ethernet technology has been very successful. More than 750 systems, equipment manufacturers and service providers have been certified as meeting Carrier Ethernet technical specifications. Carrier Ethernet equipment is widely used by service providers to deliver Triple Play services--especially in the aggregation network. However, in these implementations Carrier Ethernet is simply an enabling technology invisible to the end user. For example, the customer sees FiOS Triple Play service not Carrier Ethernet.

Retail Carrier Ethernet services such as E-Line and E-LAN service offerings have not realized their potential. There are many reasons for this failure but I believe a fundamental one is that there has been no attempt to build an open service provider neutral service offering analogous to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or the Internet. Some ancient history illustrates this point. Beginning in 1876 with the invention of the telephone, Bell and Watson began developing equipment and manufacturing technical specifications for telephones because they realized that a successful network required interoperability. Shortly thereafter Bell dropped out of the technology side of the business and began fund raising efforts around the world to establish new telephone companies. He realized that it would take many companies and many investment groups working independently to establish worldwide telephone service. He also recognized that network services benefit from a demand externality--the value of each person's telephone increases as each new subscriber joins the network. This made it imperative that each telephone company be able to buy and sell the services of all other companies. This became a process known as settlements and separations and remains in place today in a modified form. Internet Service providers also interconnect their services using a process called peering. Exploiting the demand externality was also Bell's motivation for pricing residential telephone service low compared to business service. Business telephone service becomes more valuable to the business as more of its customers have telephones. Free Internet services like Facebook and Twitter also contribute value to service providers in that they make each Internet connection more valuable to the end-user.

These time worn networking business principles have not been applied to Carrier Ethernet retail service offerings. E-Line and E-LAN offerings are typically offered in a proprietary form by a single service provider to a narrowly targeted area such as selected office buildings in world financial centers such as The City in London and Wall Street in New York. Interconnectivity to other companies' Carrier Ethernet services is rare. Many Carrier Ethernet offerings do not even meet a strict definition of a service offering. Instead of offering a common carrier service, service providers build one-off ICB (Individual Custom Bid) projects to meet a single enterprise's networking requirements. This often involves dedicating multi service provisioning platforms (MSPP) to each customer and employing dark fiber leases to reach the enterprise's sites. This is not a service offer in the strict sense but a turnkey construction project.

CENX, whose founders have been active in the Metro Ethernet Forum since its founding, are creating Carrier Ethernet exchanges that will transform Carrier Ethernet services into service provider neutral offerings like the PSTN and the Internet. CENX provides three services. A Carrier Ethernet neutral exchange system that establishes virtual service-level interconnection among CENX service provider members by implementing the Metro Ethernet Forum's External Network to Network Interface (E-NNI) technical specification; back office processes that handle the commercial functions of buying and selling of wholesale Carrier Ethernet services; and a market making function that matches buyers and sellers of Carrier Ethernet services just as the New York Stock Exchange and its floor traders match buyers and sellers of stocks.

CENX's Voice Exchange Service is one example of a Carrier Ethernet exchange service. It matches buyers and sellers of VoIP services where the calls are transported to and from the exchange as Ethernet transport services (1 GbE or 10 GbE). A Carrier Ethernet switch using the E-NNI technical specification switches calls among the service providers' networks. The service providers pay CENX a bandwidth based fee ($ per Mbps) for its service. Currently PSTN traffic is passed among service providers using TDM-based transport and circuit switches. Fees are usage based (minutes of use) with separate schedules for originated and terminated calls. The Carrier Ethernet exchange costs less than half as much to operate as the PSTN alternative due to its use of Carrier Ethernet technology versus the PSTN's TDM and circuit switching technology. Also CENX's fixed price (bandwidth-based) fee structure conforms to the modern fixed price structure of retail voice services. In contrast, the PSTN usage-based fee structure is an anachronism since retail voice services are no longer priced on a usage basis.

Development of a retail market for Carrier Ethernet services has been held back by proprietary service offerings and one-off service implementations for specific enterprise customers. Carrier Ethernet exchanges and the Metro Ethernet Forum's ENNI technical specification provide a market-based economic model for Carrier Ethernet service offerings that should stimulate Carrier Ethernet sales. However, a handful of very large service providers control most of the large enterprise services market. They may be reluctant to endorse this service provider neutral approach to service delivery out of fear of losing account control over their best customers.

Michael Kennedy is a regular FierceTelecom columnist and is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Network Strategy Partners, LLC (NSP) www.nspllc.com -management consultants to the networking industry. He can be reached at mkennedy@nspllc.com.

Comptel 2010: Verizon fuels the competitive provider's SMB drive

Sean Buckley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:41:35 -0400

Verizon Global Wholesale division is addressing the notion that for what medium sized businesses (SMBs) may lack in size their unique needs require more than just a basic telephone line with the debut a new series of VoIP and Internet service packages.

First in the trio is Verizon's SIP Gateway Service. Providing transport for VoIP traffic between packet-based IP networks and the PSTN, the SIP Gateway Service enables Verizon Global Wholesale carrier customers the ability to provide their SMB customers an easy transition to VoIP. Along with gaining access to Verizon's IP local network and telephone number inventory, wholesale customers can also offer their SMB customers a service bundle that includes NEC's UNIVERGE SV8100 IP PBX and related installation and maintenance for a discounted price.

The second offering in the series is the Internet Dedicated T1 service combines either a Samsung Ubigate iBG 1000 for data-only applications or a model 1003. In addition to providing connectivity to support 30 or more users, carrier customers can also add QoS assurance for additional cost.

And for SMBs that require more than a T1's worth of bandwidth, Verizon is offering an Ethernet-based Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) offering with 5 or 10 Mbps speeds, which is bundled with a Samsung iBG1000 router. While Verizon does not specify if the Ethernet-based service is going over a fiber-based connection, it could help expand the availability of Ethernet service to a market segment that's typically been difficult to reach for most service providers.

"By creating new VoIP and Internet packages that include both services and hardware, we're giving our wholesale customers new ways to support their small- and medium-sized business customers in a time when every nickel and every efficiency counts toward success," said Quintin Lew, senior vice president of marketing for Verizon Global Wholesale in a release.

For more:
- see the release here

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Judge approves FairPoint's reorganization plan

Sean Buckley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:31:41 -0400

FairPoint appears to be making some progress towards a recovery as U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland in New York late last week approved the troubled service provider's reorganization plan and a $75 million loan to pay for its exit out of Chapter 11 protection.

Under FairPoint's amended restructuring plan, the company would give holders of secured debt 92 percent of the shares when the company emerges from Chapter 11 protection, while unsecured creditors would get eight percent of the shares.

Still, FairPoint is far from being out of the woods. Not only does the telco have to go through a confirmation hearing this May, it also faces objections from Verizon Communications and Comcast--both questioning how its proposed settlements with creditors impact telecom service and agreements in the New England region.

"I cannot find this plan patently unconfirmable," Lifland said adding that objections could be addressed during the confirmation hearing.

For more:
- Bloomberg has this article

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Comptel 2010: RCN gets ready to build Open Cape Network

Sean Buckley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:45:56 -0400

With $32 million of broadband stimulus money in hand, OpenCape Corp. is sticking with its gentleman's agreement to let RCN Metro Optical Networks build out and manage its 350-mile hybrid fiber and microwave-based open access middle mile network.

Set to be completed in phases over three years, the OpenCape network will serve Southern Massachusetts and the Cape Cod region in a public-private partnership. OpenCape will offer a plethora of services including dedicated point-to-point SONET and Ethernet with speeds from 1.5 Mbps to 10 Gbps, wavelength services from 1.25 Mbps to 10 Gbps, and basic Internet access. Upon completion, any local government agency, public safety, business, school and library that resides in the Cape Cod area will be able to access the network.

"When we first conceived this project, we knew we needed to identify an experienced private operating partner to perform the complex technical network construction and operation," said Dan Gallagher, President of OpenCape Corporation in a release. "RCN Metro emerged as the ideal partner for this project based on their deep experience designing, building and operating highly successful middle mile networks."

OpenCape's broadband stimulus award is yet another example of the ongoing emphasis on the middle mile network. The company joins a cast of other traditional wholesalers (Level 3), state networks (North Carolina Research and Education Network) and even smaller independently-operated network providers (ION) that have won broadband stimulus awards. Middle mile providers' drive for funding has not come without its own share of controversy, however. Although arguing their networks are complementary, Maine's three-ring binder middle mile network and ION were met with protests from area incumbent telephone operators and cable companies who argued these new providers were leveraging government funds to overbuild into territories that had good broadband and wholesale fiber capabilities.

For more:
- see the release here

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Comptel 2010: Covad takes Ethernet nationwide

Sean Buckley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:53:57 -0400

After conducting technical trials in select markets last year, Covad has decided it is time to launch a nationwide Ethernet service offering.

Starting this April, Covad will offer a suite of Ethernet products that support real-time services including video conferencing and VoIP through various traffic-handling options via Quality of Service (QoS) and Class of Service (CoS) all of which are supported with SLAs.

Covad's new Ethernet service is all about flexible options. Available to about 10 million U.S. businesses, the service will be offered with either dedicated Internet access (DIA) or aggregated with one of Covad's Gigabit Ethernet-based hub aggregation services. Ethernet speed can scale as low as 1.5 Mbps up to 35 Mbps.

The launch of the new Ethernet service should come as no surprise to industry onlookers. After becoming CTO last year, one of Aamir Hussain's goals for the MPLS network was to use it as a platform to deliver Ethernet.

For more:
- see the release here

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Japanese government could separate NTT's fiber business

Sean Buckley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:45:59 -0400

To make good on its goal to bring broadband to more households by 2015, the Japanese government is mulling a plan to parse out NTT's fiber business into a separate company. Currently, broadband only reaches 30 percent of Japanese homes.

According to a report in the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri, the Japanese government, which currently owns a 33.7 stake in NTT, wants to create a new company that would build, operate and then lease the broadband networks that are owned by NTT's regional units to competitive service providers.

Kazuhiro Haraguchi, Japan's minister of internal affairs and communications, said the government will introduce its broadband strategy by mid-May. NTT, however, would not comment on any proposed spinoff plan.

The timing of such a proposal comes when NTT has been trying to find a way to keep its competitive edge against a growing presence of mobile broadband operators and trying to keep its cable laying operations on schedule.

For more:
- Reuters has this article

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FierceTelecom Leaders: Roland Thornton, EVP Wholesale Markets, Qwest - Part 2

Sean Buckley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:19:48 -0400

FierceTelecom: Traditionally, the dominant form of wireless backhaul has been TDM-based T1. Is that still the dominant form of backhaul you're selling or are you seeing demand for Ethernet/IP services?
Thornton: Generally speaking, it is Ethernet. The scalability of Ethernet is attractive especially when you have a fiber infrastructure. What's really interesting about Ethernet is what we are selling is a finished product in the wholesale space. Our wireless service provider customers can get a complete solution that we can provide to them and it allows them to move up rapidly as their demand increases all the way up to 1 Gbps.

FierceTelecom: Outside of wireless backhaul, are you seeing increasing demand for IP-based data services from traditional competitive providers as well?
Thornton: I see a general trend toward the data/IP solutions over the voice solutions for most segments of the wholesale space whether its resellers, CLECs or cable MSO accounts. They all seem, along with the rest of the industry migrating to IP solutions. Clearly, it makes sense because it's a more cost-effective way to operate, it provides a greater degree of flexibility for the both the customers and the suppliers. I don't see any reason why that trend won't continue. If each of these segments is to remain competitive, they have to continue to embrace what this new technology provides.

FierceTelecom: You talk a lot about customer service. Why is it so important to wholesale customers, and how does Qwest Wholesale continue to improve its customer experience?
Thornton: Qwest has been pretty open about our desire to perfect customer experience. That is a corporate initiative that transcends all of our units whether it's wholesale, mass markets, or small business, etc. We all have initiatives designed around our customer segments to perfect the customer experience. Clearly, wholesale has a different set of measurements to perfect the customer experience because the customers have different needs and serve different end-users. Nonetheless, we try to make our self-service tools better and we continue to look design our portal around customers so they can enter and have access to the important information in our systems with little or no human interaction. We think that's what they like so we try to provide that type of opportunity for them.

Let me also mention that the self-service tools are more economical for our customers and they are also faster. That cycle time is a huge advantage for our customers. It is one thing to just design and enhance your systems to have an improved process, but we found that you have to look at structure as well. To do that we have been migrating to a new wholesale model that is more nimble and allows decision making to occur faster. It doesn't mean we'll always say yes to a deal, but it means we'll get to a yes or no much faster.

FierceTelecom: Do you see more automation and on-demand capabilities coming into the order process?
Thornton: Yes, we're doing that on a product-specific basis. There are some products that don't lend themselves to any further automation, but where there's high growth on the data side it's very important to be able to provide quotes quickly and accurately. The upside is significant because that's where the growth is in the industry-- it's in our best interest to try to automate and enhance those customer interfaces.

Click here to go back to Part I of the interview

FierceTelecom Leaders: Roland Thornton, EVP of Wholesale Markets, Qwest

Sean Buckley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:15:39 -0400

With over 30 years of telecom experience under his belt with stints at the former SBC (now AT&T) and Ameritech (AT&T), Roland Thornton again rose to the occasion in 2004 when he was elevated from vice president of customer service operations to executive vice president of Wholesale Markets for Qwest. As FierceTelecom makes its way to this year's Spring COMPTEL show, we thought we'd catch up with Roland and get his take emerging wholesale service trends, including the burgeoning demand for new fiber-based wireless backhaul services.

FierceTelecom: Roland, we just came off what was by many accounts one of the worst economic downturns since the depression, but what does 2010 look like for Qwest Wholesale?
Thornton: There are a couple of things to keep in mind. One is we're all coming through a significant headwind with the economic downturn. It's affected a lot of areas in the business. The good news is that as we enter into 2010, I am beginning to see customers starting to buy again. They are doing it cautiously, but nonetheless we are no longer seeing the distress of the economic condition back in the middle to the second quarter of last year so that's a good thing. As we see the overall economy start to stabilize a bit--and I am not predicting growth--we are actually seeing opportunities to grow our IP data product set. At the same time, I am continuing to see the erosion of our voice products. The trajectory may bend slightly, but it's an industry trend that's just going to continue. Our goal is to outperform the industry trend, but that trend will continue to manifest itself. What we're most excited about is the growth opportunities emerging in the data/IP space. That's what we're focused on and what we're investing in.

FierceTelecom: What will drive the growth of data/IP in 2010?
Thornton: The largest growth opportunity is in the wireless backhaul business. We are committed to that business and providing our wireless service providers with the capacity they need in order to satisfy their end users. If you think about what has been happening in the past year, even in the economic downturn, capacity demands from end-users continue to increase. With this proliferation of new devices at more frequent rates--the latest of which is the iPad--the question is what impact will these devices have on wireless network backhaul capacity? I am sure customers will want to go out and buy it--that drives more capacity. As capacity demands increase then the wholesale provider is in the ideal situation to alleviate some of that congestion in the network by providing the bandwidth that wireless service providers require. I see this as an area we're very excited about. We think for the foreseeable future that trend will continue.

FierceTelecom: You mentioned wireless backhaul. What are you doing to address the demand for backhaul? Is it a mix of extending more fiber to the network and connecting fiber to more towers?
Thornton: It's all of the above. What we do of course is work with each of the wireless service providers and look at their growth rates and their demands and we ultimately like to provide fiber to these cell sites. Our effort to date has been to make connections on our fiber base because of the virtually unlimited capacity that's available when fiber is in place. We recently announced that we had 4,000 cell sites under contract. I think we are one of the leading providers of fiber-to-the-cell-site and we want to continue to look for ways to help our wireless service providers provide the service levels they need to their end users.

Click here to read Part II of the interview

Give Frontier a chance

Dan O'Shea — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:36:41 -0500

Is the ghost of FairPoint Communications haunting Frontier Communications? Probably not as much as telecom industry insiders would think, though FairPoint's problems certainly could give Frontier's critics some handy background support for their points of view.

Frontier's plan to acquire former Verizon Communications' landline assets in 14 states has run into more opposition recently in Illinois, where a judge ruled that state regulators should not approve the deal because of the resulting debt load for Frontier.

Though regulators in at least six of the 14 states affected by the deal already have given their approval, Frontier and Verizon have encountered problems in at least four states, including Illinois, West Virginia, Oregon and Washington (It later did gain approval in Oregon).

Are those who oppose the deal using FairPoint's laundry list of problems after a similar acquisition of Verizon properties to argue against Frontier's plan? No, not directly. In Illinois, we see a judge concerned about Frontier's ability to remain financially healthy under the debt load. In West Virginia, we have seen unions protesting the deal as they look out for workers' livelihood. Elsewhere, people are concerned about getting accurate bills on time and getting decent levels of customer service and support. All of these issues exist in their own corner of the universe. All of them are reasonable concerns.

Where there are similarities are in the intentions of the seller, and the good intentions of the buyers. Verizon wants to get rid of these lines, and will not invest much in them if it doesn't. The same was true of the lines Verizon unloaded to FairPoint in New England. Frontier, like FairPoint, cares about supporting these lines and serving the customers at the other end--they have to because serving the types of markets these lines are in is Frontier's core business.

That's why Frontier deserves a chance, the same way that FairPoint deserved a chance. FairPoint flubbed the opportunity in a number of ways, but long-term, it still has the chance to be a solid service provider in New England.

Though a few similarities exist, Frontier needs to be judged on its own merits. The level of concern that's been raised is a reminder of how important the stakes are to customers and employees that would be affected by the deal. Ultimately, Frontier should work with the states and constituents involved to gain support for the deal because it's the best chance for an independent telco to thrive in a changing market, and the best chance for customers in the affected states to continue seeing the benefit of telecom investment and innovation. -Dan

La. PSC considers crafting statewide phone service standards

Sean Buckley — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:40:11 -0500

Even though many Northern Louisiana consumers aren't happy with AT&T's phone service, the state's Public Service Commission (PSC) voted 3-2 to not punish Ma Bell with a $175,000 fine.

Instead, the commission is considering a mandate that all telephone companies that operate in Louisiana should be held to the same service standards it requires AT&T to meet. The PSC set these phone service benchmarks as one of the provisions AT&T had to meet in order to gain approval for its acquisition of the former BellSouth. However, these standards only apply to standard phone service and not broadband Internet or wireless service, which the state has no authority over.

In 2009, the Louisiana PSC opted to not levy the fine on AT&T--one that's meant to ensure AT&T improves the service quality of its POTS service--so it could examine whether other phone companies should be held to the same quality standards for timely installation appointments, length of service delays and how many issues can be resolved within a 24-hour period.

PSC members remain divided on the phone standards issue. Some commissioners said they were inundated with consumer calls about AT&T's poor service response times, while others said they got more complaints about AT&T's competitors and that phone standards should be "uniform across the state."

For more:
- Forbes via AP has this article

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Pacific Fibre sets ambitious undersea network course

Sean Buckley — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:12:00 -0500

New Zealand-based Pacific Fibre's founders have a simple goal: "break the digital divide between New Zealand, Australia and the rest of the world."

Pacific Fibre wants to lure investors to help it build an undersea optical cable connecting Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. that can be ready for commercial use by 2013. While initial lit capacity will be 5.12 Tbps, the network can be upgraded to 12 Tbps as 100 Gbps technology advances further into more commercial networks. Claiming to have five times the capacity of New Zealand's current Southern Cross network system, Pacific Fibre's proposed network will deliver international data services to Australia and New Zealand with a connection to the U.S. via 13,000 km of optical undersea cable. The proposed cable would include two fiber pairs with 64 wavelengths (lambdas) with each running at 40 Gbps per lambda.

By providing a direct connection between New Zealand and the U.S., Pacific Fibre says that they will not only be able to reduce the distance but also reduce network latency. In addition, the cable could be used to provide connectivity to other Pacific islands.

While Pacific Fibre's founding members include an impressive roster of serial entrepreneurs and telecom experience, the obvious challenge the company will face is getting the necessary funding to get the submarine cabling venture off the white board and into a live operating network.

For more:
- Telegeography has this article

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Juniper amplifies TeliaSonera's core network

Sean Buckley — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:02:23 -0500

The debut of Cisco's CRS-3 router may have scored high on this week's hype-o-meter, but now rival Juniper Networks is making some core routing noise of its own. TeliaSonera is leveraging Juniper's TX Matrix Plus, the multichassis version its T1600 core router.

And like most incumbent service providers, TeliaSonera has two sources on hand for its core routing needs: Cisco and Juniper. In 2007, TeliaSonera also deployed the CRS-1. For this deployment, Juniper is not replacing its rival, but instead is upgrading an existing T-Series router in its Frankfurt, Germany node to the TX Matrix Plus.

According to a LightReading article, Juniper says this deployment is part of an ongoing series of network upgrades that it has lined up with TeliaSonera. "It's not the last one. We're working with them on a number of upgrades," says Esben Dahl-Nielsen, a regional sales director at Juniper.

For more:
- Light Reading has this article

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FCC sets next Tuesday for broadband plan debut

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:23:30 -0500

After a flurry of debate and delays, the FCC's long-awaited National Broadband Plan will finally debut next Tuesday, a day before it is actually due to Congress in an open commission meeting. Now set to be presented to Congress on March 17, the FCC's Broadband Plan was pushed back from its original February due date to March.

Already, the FCC has been revealing various elements of the plan. Among them are FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's ambitious 100 squared proposal to bring 100 Mbps bandwidth capabilities to 100 million homes by 2020. Interestingly, the FCC's proposal follows Google's announcement of a 1 Gbps open access community fiber experiment.

Perhaps the most controversial element to leak out about the broadband plan is a proposal to shift the focus of the Universal Service Fund from voice to helping to provide incentives for broadband service deployments. A reformed USF plan would include a new Connect America fund and a mobility fund.

FierceTelecom will join sister publication FierceWireless in covering the FCC's Broadband Plan when it debuts on Tuesday. Stay tuned for ongoing coverage.

For more:
- Connected Planet has this article

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Investors respond well to Qwest's tender offering

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:31:26 -0500

Qwest's investors took up $959.9 million in notes of its $1.2 billion tender offer this week.

Included in Qwest Capital Funding's early tenders were $338 million in 7.9 percent notes maturing this year, which equates to 84 percent of the outstanding notes' principal in addition to $621.5 million in 7.25 percent notes that are set to mature in 2011, 78 percent of the principal of those outstanding notes.

Any notes that were tendered by the early participation deadline on 3 PM Tuesday MST offered a $30-per-$1,000 bonus. Earlier in January Qwest sold $800 million in new debt securities that will help it pay off some of the $4 billion in company debt that will be due in 2010 and 2011.

For more:
- New Mexico Business Weekly has this article

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PNG wants to bolster business focus through acquisitions

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:54:41 -0500

After deciding to realign its focus on targeting the business services segment, Cincinnati-based service provider Power Net Global wants to bolster that new focus by acquiring other businesses that complement its own core business.

Of particular interest to PNG are service providers that have similar on-net/off-net customer bases in addition to VARs, equipment sales/installation and managed service operators. At this point, PNG is not sure about the amount of companies it would purchase, nor would it reveal how it would pay for these acquisitions.

"The purpose is to grow revenue, generate new sales opportunities and drive operational efficiencies for the combined entities," Stuart Chowning, PNG's business strategist said in an interview with xChange. "This is consistent with PNG's strategy to focus on SMB and enterprise business, but does not preclude the possibility of acquiring similar businesses in the residential space."

Although PNG is not abandoning its residential voice and data service customers, the service provider's main focus will be on crafting new offerings for business customers.

For more:
- see the release here
- xChange via PHONE+ also has this article

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Virgin tests viability of aerial-based FTTH connections

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:10:51 -0500

Virgin Media is increasing its push to challenge BT in the broadband race by testing the effectiveness of Fiber to the Home (FTTH) by running fiber cable in aerial telephone pole deployments.

The trial, which will bring 50 Mbps service speeds to the Berkshire village of Woolhampton, is part of the service provider's broader plan to bring FTTH to 500,000 homes. Although Virgin Media currently serves 12.6 million homes with an underground fiber network, Virgin said that an aerial deployment could enable it to target more than 1 million new homes.

"This unique trial will allow us to understand the possibilities of aerial deployment and may provide an exciting new way to extend next generation broadband services," said Virgin Media's CEO Neil Berkett in a release.

Virgin believes that deploying fiber in both aerial and underground configurations would allow it to more effectively extend broadband services to more rural areas, a concept that the UK government is keen on driving forward. The new trial will build on the experience it gained through a Fiber to the Curb (FTTC) trial it began last fall in Cornwall.

For more:
- see the release here
- Reuters also has this article

Comptel 2010: Competitive providers, wholesalers find new identities

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:07:06 -0500

As I prepare to hop aboard a plane to head down to Nashville, Tn. on Sunday to attend my first Comptel show in six years, I thought this was a good time to put out my thoughts on what I think will be the talk of the town at this show. With much of the nasty telecom nuclear winter behind us--one that claimed the life of many early CLECs that had a lot of good ideas but suspect business plans--the competitive telecom industry has increasingly consolidated with a greater focus on business services and providing wholesale services to wireless operators or as middle-mile providers for smaller independent ILECs.

And while no one is likely to agree with my predictions, I think I can say with some degree of certainty there will be three trends that will rise to the top during the two-day Comptel show:

RLECs/Cable catch CLEC fever: Seeing an opportunity to break out of their traditional comfort zone as the local telephone POTS provider and the TV provider, cable operators and tier 2 ILECs are reaching outside their respective network territories as CLECs. While the idea of cable operators and even smaller ILECs acting as competitive providers is nothing new (take a look at Ritter Communications), I think there's two events on the independent ILEC and cable side that are changing the competitive provider game. On the independent telco side, there's Windstream's acquisition of NuVox, a purchase that allows them to more efficiently target the SMB market with IP-based services. Then, there's Comcast's impending purchase of Chicago-based Cimco, which will augment its business service drive with a host of new local and long-distance voice and data assets.
Wholesale goldmine: Given the fact that Comptel is focused on competitive providers, which will either augment their existing network footprints by purchasing wholesale capacity, or just rent raw capacity, wholesale services will be on display next week. One area that you're going to hear a lot about next week is wireless backhaul. As bandwidth hungry devices such as AT&T's iPhone and the iPad grow in popularity, wireless operators are on the hunt for new wireless backhaul alternatives. Looking to fulfill this need are not only the incumbent wireline operators with wholesale arms (AT&T, Qwest Wholesale and Verizon Parnters), but also a host of competitive wholesalers (Level 3) and what I would call wireless backhaul specialists (Telecom Transport Management and Tower Cloud).
Don't take my copper, man: Even if Verizon's Chairman Ivan Seidenberg says he's no longer worried about landline loss or that Fiber to the Home will be everywhere someday, the reality is today in 2010 copper is the dominant form of access. Interestingly, competitive providers and even savvy independent ILECs (Windstream) have found that copper is a sound medium to deliver Ethernet over Copper services. What's become controversial in recent years in the competitive provider market is the incumbent carrier's ongoing retirement of copper.

Of course, another trend worth mentioning here is that no segment is immune to ongoing economic challenges that have strangled the world economy over the past year. Facing one of the worst economic recessions since the depression, CLECs and even wholesalers saw orders remain flat or drop in 2009, but now in 2010 they are seeing some signs of life. Roland Thornton, VP of Wholesale for Qwest told me this week that he's starting to see signs of a turnaround, albeit customers are treading lightly, adding that he's seeing opportunities to grow their data and IP products. "All of us were coming through a significant headwind with the economic downturn which affected a lot of areas in our business," he said. "The good news is as we go and enter into 2010, I am beginning to see customers buy again cautiously but nonetheless no longer are we seeing the distress of the economic conditions back in the middle to the second quarter of last year."

Regardless of the challenges that service providers face, the measure of the wholesale and competitive carrier's success will be based on how their ability to respond quickly to existing and new customer needs that emerge. --Sean

FierceTelecom Leaders: Jim Jones and Lyndon Ong, Optical Internetworking Forum

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:09:17 -0500

(Editor's note: This article is also included in FierceTelecom's new eBook called Packet Optical Networking Platforms: Maintaining the legacy, next-gen balance. Click here to get your free copy today.)

Complementing vendor and service provider Packet Optical Networking Platforms (PONP) efforts is the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF). Recognizing the service provider's ongoing TDM to packet transformation, the OIF's control plane Implementation Agreements (IA's), including UNI and ENNI can be implemented on a vendor's PONP system. FierceTelecom recently caught up with Jim Jones, Vice President of Marketing and Lyndon Ong, Technical Committee Chair for the OIF about how OIF's ongoing efforts and liaisons with service providers and related industry groups are advancing interoperability for optical networking products and related network processing and components.

FierceTelecom: There's been a lot of talk about packet optical network platforms. From an OIF perspective, what is the value of these networks for the service provider that's managing multiple legacy and next-gen service types and what activities is OIF conducting related to PONPs?

Lyndon Ong: We actually don't have a project that's specifically directed at packet optical networking. We've always had a model coming from the carrier requirements that their networks consist of multiple domains. Whether those domains are technology domains or operational/administrative, the role of the OIF is largely focused on how to handle interactions between these domains.

We do have a whole bunch of 100 G projects we have going on right now. On the networking side, we have incorporated over time more and more packet-related work. When the User Network Interface (UNI) 2.0 came out and External Network to Network (E-NNI) signaling IA came out last year both of those incorporated a good deal of work that had been done on Ethernet and Ethernet services. This is work we have been actively working on with other organizations, including the IETF and the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) through liaisons. Our work has incorporated a lot of packet-oriented extensions in the control plane. Currently, we have an E-NNI 2.0 routing project that's proceeding along the same lines as the 2.0 signaling work. There's also a project on multi-layer signaling, which is specifically aimed at looking at the interactions between layers in a multilayer network. This would be how, for example, routing information gets distributed across a multi-layer network and how signaling would be used to provision services across a multi-layer network.

Click here for part II of the interview

Windstream stems landline bleeding with double-play offering

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:12:43 -0500

Wireline voice erosion is an ongoing reality for every traditional telco, but Windstream thinks that the right weapon to battle this problem is its $49.99 double-play data/local and long-distance voice bundle with a "price for life guarantee."

Speaking at this week's Credit Suisse Global Media and Communications Conference, Windstream's CFO Tony Thomas said that its bundled offering, which was launched last September, has enabled the ILEC to increase broadband penetration and drive down voice line losses in 2009 to fewer than five percent.

"When you look at our consumer offering, it is anchored around broadband and bundling," said Thomas adding that residential customers will purchase an affordable wireline voice line that's bundled with broadband DSL "for the convenience of making a long-distance call from their home."

During the fourth quarter, Windstream lost about 35,000 voice lines (a slight increase over Q3 09), but its broadband subscriber base increased 10 percent with the addition of 27,000 new customers. As of the end of 2009, Windstream had a little over 1.1 million broadband subscribers and it lost 153,100 voice lines.

For more:
- LightReading has this article

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Telstra shares jump as government can't get support for breakup

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:50:45 -0500

With news emerging that the Australian government can't get the support it needs to divvy up the incumbent service provider, Telstra appears to be winning the fight as company shares were up 2.7 percent to $2.74--the highest rise it has seen since September.

Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has failed to get the support of other political parties to divest its wireline business as the government proceeds with its $39 billion NBN Co. broadband initiative. While the prospect of a Telstra breakup is not completely off the table, it appears that some politicians want more time to study the NBN project and the breakup of Telstra.

"There is a relief rally occurring on the prospect that the legislation won't be passed," said Mark McDonnell, an analyst at Sydney-based BBY Ltd in a Bloomberg article. "It doesn't mean that it will be defeated but it will take more time."

For more:
- see this Bloomberg article

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Sprint Wholesale loses Time Warner Cable voice contract

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:23:38 -0500

Since launching its wholesale voice service for cable, Sprint Wholesale has enjoyed a steady stream of ongoing revenue from major cable MSOs, but now the division will be taking a major revenue hit as a Bernstein Research note confirmed that Time Warner Cable is phasing out their voice outsourcing agreement with the carrier.

A report written by Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research revealed that the contract with Time Warner Cable "equates to about $5 per subscriber per month in unadjusted earnings, or about $249 million a year."

Time Warner Cable spokesman Justin Venech said that while the company has decided to bring its voice operations 'in-house,' he would not confirm the exact date when this transition will be completed or what TWC pays Sprint for this service. "It improves our economics, but it will take several years to complete," said in a Kansas City Business Journal article.

Sprint, meanwhile said that the phase out of the Time Warner Cable would not affect its 2010 financial performance.

Interestingly, Moffet's report appears just as Sprint looks to be on a rebound. After Sprint's CFO Bob Brust said that the company could see revenue growth later this year, company shares rose nine percent to $3.62 on Tuesday.

For more:
- see the Kansas City Business Journal article

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Integra Telecom gets spot on Portland Trail Blazers roster

Sean Buckley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:50:24 -0500

On the cusp of the NBA playoff season, Integra Telecom has secured the service provider position on the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team. Integra will provide Ethernet and other broadband service to the team to enable online streaming of content and video to the fans that access the Trail Blazers' Web sites. Under the terms of the agreement, Northeast Portland, Ore.-based Integra will also become a corporate team partner.

"As the cornerstone of the Rose Quarter complex and a neighbor of Integra, we see this as a great fit and we're pleased to be involved with the team on many levels," said Dudley Slater, CEO of Integra Telecom.

For more:
- see the release here

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Zayo Enterprise Networks puts fiber in Denver businesses' diet

Sean Buckley — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:29:47 -0500

If anyone thinks there's a fiber glut, they obviously have not talked to Zayo Enterprise Networks. To keep up with new business service demands, the competitive provider is pumping 100 miles of new fiber routes in its Denver market to bring power up its 'Fiber-to-the-Enterprise' initiative.

A key part of the fiber deployment will be BTI Systems' packet optical network platforms (PONP) and carrier Ethernet platforms. Zayo will leverage BTI 7000 Series packet optical networking platform and the BT 700 Series Ethernet demarcation and aggregation devices to deliver 1 Gbps and higher Ethernet and IP services to Denver area business customers.

While much of the attention around PONPs have centered on large service providers (Verizon), competitive providers such as Zayo are finding these platforms have great utility to deliver alternative metro connectivity to various vertical market segments, including healthcare, school districts and government agencies.

For more:
- see the release here

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Global Crossing upgrades submarine network routes

Sean Buckley — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:03:19 -0500

Growing demand from enterprise and service provider customers for more IP and Ethernet transport has prompted Global Crossing to expand the capacity on three of its Mid-Atlantic Crossing (MAC), South American Crossing (SAC) and Pan American Crossing (PAC) submarine cable systems.

Expected to be implemented over the next six months, with some segments ready as early as this May, the network upgrades will boost capacity between Latin America, North America and Europe.

One region that these new upgrades will satisfy is Latin America where carriers are either looking to route traffic within the region or a service provider that needs network access into the U.S. to serve one of their multinational enterprise customers. "The Latin American market is poised to sustain strong growth," said John Legere, Global Crossing's CEO in a release. "The investments we are making are in response to the continued demand Global Crossing is experiencing across our global network for broadband services such as video over IP, social media and content delivery networks."

For more:
- see the release here

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Frontier-Verizon deal faces opposition in Illinois

Sean Buckley — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:25:05 -0500

Frontier's ambition to become one of the largest independent service providers through acquiring Verizon's rural lines hit a snag this week when an administrative judge in Illinois ruled that its state's regulators should not approve the deal. With nearly 600,000 customers, Illinois is a sizeable market in the 14-state territory that Frontier wants to acquire from Verizon.

Administrative Law Judge Lisa M. Tapia said that the amount of debt Frontier would take on would inhibit it from being able to properly manage its lines and provide a consistent customer experience.

"The proposed reorganization will diminish Frontier's ability to provide adequate, reliable, efficient, safe and least-cost public utility service," Tapia wrote in her order.

Now, the deal is in the hands Illinois' Commerce Commission. According to the Herald-Review, the regulator will make a decision to either amend or adopt Tapia's report by late April.

Illinois is not the only state to question the Frontier-Verizon deal. In West Virginia, unions and the attorney general also questioned Frontier's ability to maintain customer service and expand broadband availability.

Despite the protests to the deal Verizon argued that its sale of its lines to Frontier is in the public interest and should be approved. "Based on the record in this case, we believe the commission should not adopt the administrative law judge's recommendation, but instead should issue an order that approves the transaction, as regulatory commissions in six other states have already done," said Carl Erhart, president of Verizon's Central region in a statement.

For more:
- see this Herald-Review article

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