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Carrier Services
Colt Launches High-Speed Ethernet
Service to Address Last-Mile Bottleneck, Says Carrier
by Iain Morris
Pan-European carrier Colt has announced the rollout of new
Ethernet technology that the service provider claims will boost access speeds in
the local loop to 40 Mbps.
‘Ethernet in the First Mile’ reportedly takes advantage of local
loop unbundling to offer business customers a high-speed
service capable of supporting advanced data and converged
applications, including IP VPNs and Colt Total – a voice and
Internet access package aimed at SMEs.
The service has already been introduced in Belgium and is
operating at speeds of up to 20 Mbps, says Colt. Over the
course of the year, it plans to introduce service at unbundled
exchanges in Denmark, France, Italy and the UK.
“Demand for greater bandwidth is growing exponentially and
the traditional limitations of copper have been stopping many
businesses from improving their communications and
migrating to the next generation of services,” says Alireza
Mahmoodshahi, CTO of Colt. “Colt is one of the first service
providers to unlock this bottleneck using new ‘EFM’
technology.”
Rival Easynet – which also has a pan-European presence –
announced a similar first-mile solution in June, but Colt
believes its footprint will be wider.
Colt concedes that speeds as high as 40 Mbps are unlikely to
be possible in most cases. Factors affecting speed include
regulatory restrictions regarding copper-pair limits, the
distance between the exchange and a customer’s premises
and the number of copper pairs being used.
The carrier denies the service represents a shift in strategic
focus. Colt has its own fiber network but currently appears to
be concentrating on the unbundling of local loops. So far, it
claims to have unbundled 500 exchanges in 10 countries
across Europe.
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