tw telecom (Nasdaq: TWTC) has added a 40G and 100G Ethernet option to meet the requirements of larger business customers, including the financial and public sector verticals where the adoption of Big Data applications is growing rapidly.
These new options, which complement their current 2.5 Gig and 10 Gig intra-market Ethernet speeds, can be used by enterprise customers to accommodate various applications including storage management, virtualization strategies, business continuity and disaster recovery, and for transaction data backup to off-site or data center locations.
Customers that opt for the 40G and 100G Ethernet options will get their own connection that includes optical ports and a dedicated optical wavelength.
"While it's still very early in deploying this amount of capacity, there are certain enterprise customers that have asked for so we have built to meet their requirements, and those tend to be more data center interconnect or data center to data center strategies mostly for storage management," said Mike Rouleau, Senior Vice President – Business Development and Strategy, in an interview with FierceTelecom.
Rouleau added that that these new speeds will appeal to a number of vertical segments as they grapple with data storage requirements.
"We're going to see this move across verticals, particularly as people are dealing with storage demand and storage requirements, and regulation has a significant impact in the way people manage their data," he said. "Depending on those requirements you hold on to a lot more a lot longer and you have to make it highly available so it becomes a challenge for the large enterprise customer."
On the wholesale side, the initial interest will likely come from data center providers that need to connectivity between their locations.
"Where I would see it first if you're thinking about wholesale is data center customers as they look at how to connect between their data center locations and mesh that infrastructure," Rouleau said.
What also helps tw telecom in delivering this service is its current base of buildings connected to its fiber network. As of the end of Q1, the service provider had a total of 18,500 on-net buildings.
Adding these speed options makes tw telecom's Ethernet service even more competitive with other CLECs and large traditional telcos such as Verizon (NYSE: VZ), which recently added 100 Gigabit Ethernet capabilities to its Private IP network offering.
The 40G and 100G speeds are also part of its Constellation Platform that it says will allow retail and wholesale customers to "click and connect" the Ethernet bandwidth they need on demand. Earlier, tw telecom began offering its one-to-many national Ethernet interconnection solution and Dynamic Capacity capabilities. One-to-many enables other competitive providers to instantly expand their out-of-region Ethernet and network reach, while its Dynamic Capacity product allows existing customers to dial up bandwidth as needed.
As one of the early purveyors of Ethernet services, tw telecom has continued its rein as the third largest Ethernet provider behind AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon. While it has not revealed the date of its Q2 earnings in Q1 2013, strong Ethernet and VPN product sales drove up data and Internet services revenue 14.3 percent, or $25 million year-over-year, to $202 million.
For more:
- see the release
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Updated article on Jun 28 with correct on-net building count and quotes from Mike Rouleau on the 40, 100G service.