ORLANDO, Fla.--EarthLink Carrier is giving its wholesale customers the same multi-service aggregation platform and MPLS access across its nationwide network that it has had for retail customers.
By introducing these options, EarthLink can enable wholesale options for these services in new geographic areas while creating new access options in its existing regions.
One of the potential advantages that could give EarthLink a running start with this product is it has offered it to retail customers for a number of years, meaning it has experience in delivering the product and back office processes in place to deliver it to wholesale carrier customers that desire similar services.
"Although this is a new product for us in carrier, this is something we have done on the retail side for some time," said Scott Maginn, director of product and business development for EarthLink Carrier, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "On the managed transport side, the process of building and managing networks is something we have done for a long time and we have a dedicated NOC and a lot of the processes are the same so there's an advantage to that."
With network footprint fast becoming a key differentiator, particularly for service providers that want to move up market into larger enterprise accounts with multiple locations, EarthLink's Multi-Service Aggregation (MSAG) platform can provide a single network interconnect capable of aggregating EarthLink Carrier MPLS network-to-network interconnection (NNI) and EarthLink Carrier E-Access products.
MSAG allows wholesale customers to extend their MPLS network and Layer 2 Ethernet services throughout EarthLink's network footprint while simplifying network configuration and reducing expenses.
EarthLink has NNI points available in 25 markets, including various Southeastern locations as well as New York City, Worcester, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles. A carrier can provision MSAG across one NNI or multiple NNIs, all of which include network redundancy to ensure business continuity for their enterprise customers. The service provider can also take its Layer 2 Ethernet product into the same NNI.
By extending the MPLS access capabilities, wholesale customers can choose from a range of last mile network options, including DSL, DS-1, Ethernet over Fiber, cable or wireless connections to connect remote service locations to the MPLS network.
Lorenzo Leuzzi, VP of carrier and wholesale services for EarthLink, said that this new product enables the wholesale services group to bid on RFPs from carriers that were looking for multi-location opportunities in both the larger enterprise and retail segments.
"In the past, we only had ability to bid on opportunities that fell into our on-net footprint of the Northeast and Southeast," Leuzzi said. "What this new product allows us to do is go out and offer a nationwide footprint to our customers where they can take advantage of all the access solutions we have, meaning they can connect to us with a dedicated NNI and buy any access method whether it be DSL, Ethernet, or bonded T-1s."
Leuzzi added that a key goal of the service is to help wholesale customers fill in coverage gaps.
"In places where we have strong pricing for them, they can use us, package it together with another carrier and sell one solution to their customer," Leuzzi said. "It helps really fill the gaps where they had issues in getting services on the West Coast where we have service and allow us to offer a larger solution for multi-location businesses."
Besides having a wide set of last mile network access options, EarthLink Carrier is also offering seven different profiles for Class of Service (CoS), giving customers more quality options.
"We have seven different profile buckets so depending on what type of profile customers are looking for in terms of real-time versus best effort, we have a number of different solutions for that as well," Maginn said.
For more:
- see the release
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