How is it possible for an enterprise with medium to large communications network requirements to re-engineer the access, or local loop, portion of their network while also realizing substantial monthly cost savings and reducing the time to get new services turned up? And doing so while improving the quality of the connections?
Sound too good to be true?
The New Opportunities from CLEC Consolidation
Traditional players in the access portion of the network are the RBOC, ILEC and CLEC. Here in Manhattan the incumbent is the RBOC and that is Verizon. The CLECs here include MFS (WorldCom), AT&T Local, Time Warner, and XO. They now are facing competition from Metro Area Network (MAN) providers. With the current business impediments facing the traditional CLEC, a tremendous opportunity has presented itself to enterprise clients with large communication network requirements.
As consolidation has occurred within the CLEC and the transport segment of the carriers, enterprise network operators have a huge opportunity, if they know where to go and how to deploy. You can now access the cost effective, time efficient and higher-quality connections that the carriers have been using themselves for decades.
Deregulation and the “Carrier Hotel”
The rise of an entirely new network segment known as the Carrier Hotel and Interconnection Facility, also known as the Meet Me Area, within it. Further deregulation and the massive growth of facilities based carriers in the Long Distance Carrier (IXC) network segment, has developed a greater hierarchy for the process of interconnection. This process was that IXCs used RBOCs and CLECs to connect to other IXCs and end users(essentially a “local loop”). In an effort to reduce the monthly costs that IXCs had to bear, they decided to reduce the proximity between their networks and establish direct interconnections thus eliminating the local loop. The carriers (IXC, RBOC, CLEC, ILEC) built their facilities within common locations that housed other carriers, thus the term Carrier Hotel.
Your Personal Carrier Hotel: Consolidate, Streamline, Save.
It makes sense to have a central interconnection point in your building so that dollars spent on extending also create a presence that can be used to provide multiple carrier interconnections.
The time is right for your enterprise networks comprised of these disparate connections that use RBOCs, ILECs and CLECs to connect to IXCs, ISPs and others to re-engineer. This will extend your corporate “phone closet” and establish a presence in the same interconnect facilities within the Carrier Hotels. Again, this is what that the carriers themselves use to cut costs, time and improve quality for their own connections – Now it’s your turn.
Rather than wait for the IXC, or ISP to provision a one-off loop to you, why not go to them? And instead of reaching just one, why not have ready access to over a hundred? The premise is to take advantage of the capex investment those companies made themselves to get the “Meet Me Area”, and hold them to the notion that a cross connect to them is physically on-net, and no “local loop” charges apply. You are also buying at a “wholesale” price within the carrier hotel.
By re-engineering your network over larger, diverse path optical signals that you own and operate, or have someone else manage, you are eliminating the hops, time delay, and costs of the CLEC/RBOC TDM SONET network and provisioning them across your own extended demarcation point to the interconnect facility.
Need more information on this topic?
This is an exciting, but complex topic in the Telco industry. Give me a ring directly or fill out the contact-form below and I will do my best to answer your questions. I have been dealing with Tier-1 providers in this arena for well over a decade and will send you in the right direction for your needs.
- JD
