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Carrier Services
AT&T expands its global carrier Ethernet footprint
14 countries across Europe and Asia-Pacific can now access VPLS service
by Doug Allen
In the face of wide-ranging Carrier Ethernet rollouts from KPN and Tiscali International Network, AT&T has expanded the footprint of its formerly U.S.-only OPT–E-WAN Ethernet service to large enterprise and multinational business customers in Europe and the Asia-Pacific rim. This brings VPLS service for high-speed applications and LAN/WAN transport across Germany, the UK, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore and Japan.
Since Europe and Asia-Pacific businesses (and their related branch offices and related sites) have become a hotly contested battleground for Ethernet providers, the move delivers on AT&T’s March 2008 promise of a European Ethernet rollout. The world’s best-known telecom brand can capitalize on its good standing with multinational corporations across the world, as well as its far-flung global MPLS network. And AT&T has somewhat of a first-mover advantage among Tier 1 carriers too.
While KPN’s VPLS offer is available in 22 countries, mostly across these regions, major rivals Verizon Business, Orange Business Services and BT Global services have yet to launch cross-border VPLS throughout Europe. UK-based competitive provider COLT’s VPLS footprint extends across 34 MANs and 100 Ethernet-enabled POPs. Meanwhile, Tiscali International Network has just announced global availability for its Ethernet Extension wholesale capacity
(see Tiscali International Network takes carrier Ethernet global ), but of course partners for off-network connectivity, and can’t match AT&T’s on-net footprint, at least in Europe.
“The carrier’s VPLS capability leverages MPLS to extend LANs transparently across the WAN in a full mesh configuration between provider edge routers for rapid traffic re-route for resiliency and giving network managers new levels of ease-of-use for adding/removing sites,” writes Joel Stradling, a senior analyst at Current Analysis, in a recent competitive intelligence report. “End users can also apply bandwidth priorities to separate VLANs according to individual mission-critical applications and scale bandwidth per-site according to need. All the above results in a compelling sales message…Customer requests for retaining control of the IP routing tables can now be met head-on by AT&T’s sales staff with a positive answer. Such options were not previously possible on AT&T’s L3 IP VPN. Keeping control of IP routing tables has strong appeal in certain verticals, such as banking and finance.”
Most business customers are familiar with the benefits of virtual private LAN Ethernet services. As a future-ready migration path for legacy ATM/Frame Relay customers, OPT-E-WAN is more cost-effective, flexible and efficient in terms of bandwidth rates and multi-protocol support, with lower-cost CPE that maintains a native Ethernet interface between the LAN and WAN.
However, customers should be aware that AT&T reportedly has only one Ethernet-Network to Network Interconnection (E-NNI) transport partner in each country, at least initially, as opposed to some rival providers that have multiple third-party capacity suppliers. Stradling points out that for example, COLT claims it has 85 E-NNI partners.
As with all providers that have to partner for off-network connectivity, AT&T will likely have greater difficulty in provisioning deep-penetration third-party tails for off-net traffic, which directly impacts its ability to deliver consistent SLAs extending to the customer premise. Furthermore, OPT-E-WAN is not available as a fully managed end-to-end service, although AT&T may be able to provide greater management capabilities through separate business services. The service is also not integrated with AT&T’s BusinessDirect management portal to give customers online monitoring.
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