Level 3 has signed a new bilateral IP interconnection network agreement with AT&T (NYSE: T), one of the latest pacts the competitive provider has made with a Tier 1 U.S. telco.
By establishing this agreement, the two service providers said they will improve the efficiency of traffic exchanged between their networks. By gaining new additional capacity and new interconnection locations between the networks, Level 3 and AT&T will be able to deliver a better quality and reliable experience for their end-user customers.
Roman Pacewicz, senior vice president of marketing and global strategy for AT&T Business Solutions, said in a release that adding network capacity from Level 3 will enable it to provide necessary speeds to support the access of bandwidth-hungry traffic from Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and other over-the-top sources.
AT&T is the latest telco to establish an agreement with Level 3.
Just last month, Level 3 garnered a similar agreement with Verizon (NYSE: VZ), one that allows the two parties to make similar traffic delivery improvements. Part of that agreement included new connections for Verizon Digital Media Services' CDN to connect to Level 3's global network.
Level 3 is not the only service provider that's been developing interconnection agreements with Tier 1 telcos. Fellow Internet transit provider Cogent signed an agreement with Verizon earlier this month. Like the pact Level 3 made with Verizon, the two companies can also add capacity and establish new interconnection locations between the two networks.
Interestingly, Level 3 and Cogent's agreements with AT&T and Verizon come as the FCC looks to put its net neutrality rules into order on June 12. Level 3 and Cogent have said that they could be the first to file net neutrality complaints. Cogent Communications has cited Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) with degrading Internet traffic.
However, these new agreements should help to prevent Cogent or Level 3 from filing formal complaints with the FCC, which on Friday denied requests by a number of Tier 1 telcos and associations to delay implementing the rules.
For more:
- see the release
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