AT&T, MetTel extend wholesale service agreement

MetTel, a competitive provider focused on serving business customers, has reached a new agreement with AT&T (NYSE: T) to extend their wholesale voice services agreement through 2017, enabling it to continue offering services to customers without fear of disruption.

Besides traditional POTS voice services, MetTel will continue to enhance its IP-based service reach via agreements with AT&T for virtual private networking (VPN) service. Both of these services will allow MetTel to have a bridge between legacy to next-gen services by being able to deliver a mix of traditional voice as well as next generation services to its customers.

By using AT&T's VPN private networking service, MetTel can create an application-aware VPN that links locations and efficiently transports voice, data and video over a single connection. Ultimately, the service provider can provide a set of broader managed services on top.

The agreement with MetTel comes at a time when AT&T is looking for more regulatory clearance from the FCC to move forward with its own TDM-to-IP transition, including migrating customers off legacy TDM-based circuits to IP.

MetTel is just one of a number of new agreements AT&T has signed with its CLEC customers. In October, Granite Telecommunications, which has found success in selling traditional POTS services to large customers like Home Depot, signed a similar agreement with the telco that will also extend through 2017.

For more:
- see the release

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