If you're a wholesale carrier customer and need a DS1 or DS-3 circuit a bit quicker, you're in luck if you're buying it off of Verizon Global Wholesale (NYSE: VZ).
Verizon has reduced the intervals to get a DS-1 to seven days and eight days to get a DS3 circuit.
With this standardization, Verizon is reducing intervals in some areas, while in others it is staying the same. In the East, which consists of the former Bell Atlantic territory, Verizon has reduced the provisioning time of a DS-1 from nine days to seven, while in the West it has cut the interval to provision a DS-3 from 12 to eight days.
"Overall, the net-net is the intervals in most cases are going down or are staying where they are in many cases," said Sean Sullivan, marketing director for Verizon Global Wholesale. "Standardization is the key and for the customers that tend to expedite a lot in the areas where it's going down it's going to save them some added expense."
Effective Sept. 18, Verizon's new provisioning intervals will be available to customers in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia. Both the DS-1 and DS-3 circuits come with various service level agreements (SLAs), ranging from basic SLAs and optional network performance metrics.
While these new intervals will reduce service activation time, if a service provider customer requires an expedited order, it will obviously cost extra.
To achieve these new activation times, Verizon had to reduce the design phase, reduce the frame continuity and test time frame and turn up time. "Our systems reflect all of these changes so when someone sends in a request for a DS1 in the East that was normally nine days is now going to be seven if they request a seven day interval there will be no expedite necessary."
Not surprisingly, big drivers and recipients of DS-3 circuits are wireless operators. "A lot of the volume we're getting today is from our wireless customers," Sullivan said.
However, Sullivan realizes that Verizon's traditional special revenue in the wireless backhaul space is increasingly being taken over by more IP-centric services, including Ethernet. "I think the wireless customers that are buying up our DS-1 and DS-3 products today are not a forever thing and if you look out, I think they're going to be moving to some Ethernet-type product where you get the scalability, flexibility and enhanced bandwidth."
For more:
- see the release here
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