Telstra Wholesale joins the Carrier Ethernet 2.0 club

Telstra Wholesale (ASX: TLS.AX) is the latest service provider to gain the Metro Ethernet Forum's (MEF's) Carrier Ethernet 2.0 (CE 2.0) certification for its new "Data Advantage" Ethernet Access and Ethernet backhaul products, which it debuted last August.

The Data Advantage product line offers wholesale customers four primary products: managed leased line, Ethernet, Ethernet backhaul and point-to-point fiber services.

What's significant about this announcement is that the Australian provider is now the first Asia Pacific region provider and the second provider overall to be CE 2.0 certified. Its CE 2.0 E-Line Ethernet products are available nationally, covering about 1,700 metropolitan and regional Exchange Service Areas.

Bryce Blacker, Telstra Wholesale's general manager of solutions, said in a release that "MEF CE 2.0 E-Line certification means our customers can have complete confidence in the quality and reach of our Ethernet products."

The service provider follows in the footsteps of Comcast Business, which received its CE 2.0 certification in February.

With a particular focus on providing a standard of methods and practices for Ethernet interconnection between two service providers, CE 2.0 incorporates a number of new features, including multiple Classes of Service (CoS) and an easier interconnection process for eight standard service types, in addition to enabling efficiencies for mobile backhaul applications. In addition, CE 2.0's S-OAM capability allows service providers to improve service levels through rapid and detailed fault detection capabilities.

Nan Chen, president of the MEF, said 18 of Telstra's employees have MEF Carrier Ethernet certified processional (CECP) accreditation.

Supporting the service provider community with CE 2.0 are 20 vendors that became CE 2.0 certified during the recent MEF meeting in January.

While the CE 2.0 market is still nascent, it will give Telstra Wholesale a way to differentiate itself in its native Australia and other countries where it competes heavily with a host of other global players such as AT&T (NYSE: T), BT (NYSE: BT), NTT (NYSE: NTT), Orange Business Services and Verizon (NYSE: VZ), all of which are in the process of developing their own game plans to get CE 2.0 certification.

For more:
- see the release

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