TelePacific Communications has carved out wholesale service terms with its wholesale supplier AT&T (NYSE: T) designed to help smooth its migration to all IP-based services such as Ethernet and VoIP, while ensuring that legacy TDM services remain available.
Terms of the agreement were not revealed.
"We value our long-standing relationship with AT&T Wholesale," said Dick Jalkut, president and CEO of TelePacific, in a release. "We're committed to supporting our customers' requirements today at the same time that we rapidly bring them new capabilities that will help them grow their businesses."
The agreement is important to TelePacific as the CLEC continues to expand its presence in Texas, where AT&T is the dominant incumbent telco.
Having this agreement in place could ensure it gets access to copper facilities to continue building out its growing Ethernet over Copper (EoC) offering. In February, TelePacific struck an interconnection agreement with fellow competitive provider Alpheus Communications that gave it immediate access to 129,000 Texas business locations.
From a broader competitive industry perspective, this is key as other competitive telcos that purchase wholesale services from AT&T look for direction on how they can also ensure that their existing customers aren't disrupted as the telco transitions towards IP.
AT&T's IP transition, including its proposed trials in Alabama and Florida, have become a controversial issue for the competitive telecom industry with many arguing that the telco has not given enough guidance on how it will address wholesale customers' needs.
For more:
- see the release
Editor's Corner: AT&T's IP transition trial should consider impact on business customers
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