Time Warner Cable Business enhances Ethernet portfolio with nationwide coverage, customer portal

Time Warner Cable Business Class (NYSE: TWC) is looking to appeal to medium and large multi-site business customers by serving up a number of new features for its Ethernet services suite.

Among the new features are nationwide coverage, a customer management portal, new speed tiers and managed Ethernet services.

To gain nationwide coverage, TWCBC is leveraging a mix of its own backbone network facilities and those from other providers to serve locations outside of its on-net footprint with a single bill. TWCBC said that it has established 130 External Network-to-Network Interface (E-NNI) agreements with 25 other service providers.

Providing nationwide coverage via a mix of its own facilities and using other providers is a bit of a new twist and will be a differentiator in the cable industry's delivery of Ethernet since they typically have stuck to their own network footprints.

By providing a customer management portal, customers will be able to get a better handle on how their circuits are performing and take TWCBC to task if the service provider is not living up to its promised performance and service level agreements (SLA).

Nav Chander, research manager, enterprise telecom at IDC, said that the management portal will help TWCBC set itself apart from others in the competitive Ethernet market that is rapidly consolidating.

"A key differentiator for the TWCBC solution is a new customer management portal that puts the power in the hands of the customer and gives them the ability to view their networks overall performance," Chander said in a release. "This feature will be vital as customers become more knowledgeable about the technology behind their business in helping them to manage what they need."

Given the diverse needs of its customer base and the availability of its network facilities, the service provider will offer a mix of speeds over its existing hybrid fiber coax (HFC) and fiber networks. On the HFC-based network, it can deliver speeds ranging from 512 Kbps--10 Mbps, while the fiber network will offer speeds from 5 Mbps--10 Gbps. Business customers that purchase the Ethernet service with its Managed Router Services offering can also hand off the day-to-day management of their networks to TWCBC.

These enhancements could also have a larger impact in the business services space if Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) is successful in completing its purchase of Time Warner Cable. Having these new capabilities could help the newly combined company become a larger threat to traditional ILECs and large multinational providers like Level 3 to compete for larger multi-site business customers whose reach extends beyond cable's traditional network service borders.

For more:
- see the release

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