By Paula Bernier

XO Communications Inc.s Wholesale Local Voice services platform now can help CLECs serving residential customers transition off of the RBOCs UNE Platforms and instead use central office and transport services from XO to deliver telephone services.

As the largest independent national local exchange carrier, XO can offer CLECs a more cost-effective facilities-based alternative to the Bells UNE-P platforms, says Ernie Ortega, president of carrier sales at XO. By utilizing our national facilities-based network, competitive providers in the residential market can continue to provide their customers with an alternative to the local telephone companies.

CLECs that use the XO services typically will save between 15 percent and 30 percent compared to what they would spend through long-term deals with the RBOCs, says Don MacNeil, executive director of carrier services at XO.

With the elimination of UNE-P, many of the nonfacilities-based CLECs were then forced to go execute commercial agreements with the respective ILECs as a means to kind of take care of their installed base while at the same time, put in place contracts that would allow them to continue on with business, says MacNeil. As time went on and through the negotiation process and this is what weve been hearing from our customers many of the contracts that the ILECs were offering werent compelling. As a result, many sought two different avenues. These include either buying a switch or joining a switching consortium in which multiple CLECs share a switch, he says. So if youve got a switch, the next piece thats missing is the transport to get from your switch to the PSTN for call access and then, ultimately, getting to your subscriber base.

So XO provides GR303 concentration as well as access to DLCs to allow CLECs to activate, deactivate and troubleshoot copper on an as-needed basis, says MacNeil. One of the big driving forces [that XO is using to appeal to CLECs is giving them] the ability to tap into metallic loop testing without having to call me, he adds.

The XO platform provides a predetermined block of capacity for telephone lines and a physical connection for transporting voice traffic from the XO colocation facility to the competitive providers voice switch. Competitive service providers will need to provision local loops to their customers, but the platform eliminates the need for competitive providers to build costly switching facilities in every central office to provide services to their customers.

Wholesale Local Voice from XO is available in 30 major PoPs through more than 950 colocation facilities in 70 metropolitan markets across the United States.

Due to XOs metropolitan footprint, our colocation presence across the top 70 MSAs, we provide the ability to aggregate transport on a per-city basis; have the reach into, say, 20 to 40 colos, depending on our colos and the interests of the CLECs; and allow them to have a virtual presence in each of those colos so they can then order the unbundled loop from our colocation out to their customers, says MacNeil.

While this new offer from XO is targeted at CLECs serving residential and small business customers, the XO Wholesale Local Voice services platform already supports a number of business-focused CLECs in providing local voice and integrated services. The platform provides a number of services that enable business-focused CLECs to costeffectively continue to offer services and enter new markets. These services include: