Carrier Channel: News Briefs

Posted: 01/2000

News Briefs

Broadview Networks (www.broadviewnet.com),
an ICP serving the Northeast, has announced a service plan for residents in New
York that offers a flat-rate package for local, regional and long distance
calling and Internet access.

The Broadview No Limits plan is $29.95 per month and currently is available
for residents of New York, Long Island and Westchester and Rockland counties.
According to the company, this price for all service is 55 percent less than the
equivalent services from ILEC Bell Atlantic Corp. (www.bellatlantic.com)
or AT&T Corp. (www.att.com) if purchased a la carte.

The No Limits plan provides the following services in one package: local dial
tone, unlimited local calling, unlimited dial-up Internet access, up to 300
minutes of free regional calling per month with subsequent usage billed at 5
cents per minute, and state-to-state long distance calling for 7 cents per
minute all day, every day.

AT&T Corp. now offers an integrated services solution for
businesses that combines bundled services, online customer service capabilities
and savings opportunities to help business customers more efficiently manage and
use communications.

AT&T Business Network includes an integrated communications package of
local, long distance, international, wireless, data and IP all on one bill; a
set of electronic servicing tools that allow businesses to give their customers
the ability to order services, manage their accounts and review and pay bills
online; competitive pricing that includes incentives for purchasing multiple
communications services and discounts for calls that originate and/or terminate
on the AT&T wired or wireless network; and future-proof migration to
emerging technologies, which will allow AT&T business customers to move
easily from circuit switching to frame relay, ATM, IP and broadband services.

GST Telecommunications Inc. (www.gstcorp.com)
has announced Enhanced Business Services, a local dial-tone product that blends
Centrex, business services and other enhanced communications options into one
solution for small and medium-sized business customers. The product offering
bundles four calling features–caller ID, call transfer, conferencing and
hunting–plus an additional feature of the customer’s choosing all at a flat
rate per business line. Additional features, such as voice mail and long
distance, can be added at the customer’s discretion for a fee per service.

GST also will offer Enhanced Business Services as a local dial-tone option in
GST’s suite of PowerFlex integrated communications packages. PowerFlex provides
local dial tone, long distance, data and Internet services over a single digital
T1 connection.

Network Access Solutions (NAS) (www.nas-corp.com)
has expanded its CopperNet frame relay network nationwide through a
network-to-network interface (NNI) arrangement with Intermedia
Communica-tions Inc. (www.intermedia.com).
This expansion allows NAS to offer nationwide frame relay services to customers
requiring national connectivity.

NAS’s digital subscriber line (DSL) CopperNet frame relay service previously
was available only in the Northeast. Companies now can receive DSL-based,
high-speed access and egress facilities for frame relay transport in the
Northeast and can originate and terminate traffic outside NAS’s Northeast
network using traditional facilities. Through the Intermedia deal, the NNI
interface allows the seamless transfer of information between NAS and Intermedia
network nodes for multinetwork interoperability.

Cybertel Communications Corp. (www.cybertelcorp.com)
has launched a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telecommunications gateway in
San Diego as part of a national expansion program. This is the company’s first
IP gateway and will enable Cybertel to route long distance phone calls over the
Internet directly to 11 major markets–including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas,
Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Reno, San Francisco, San Jose and
Washington–completely independent of other carriers’ switches. Cybertel also
can issue its San Diego area customers its own local telephone numbers.

The gateway uses packet-switching technology to transform analog voice
signals into digital electronic data packets before transporting them over the
Internet. The packets then are reassembled into analog voice on the terminating
side of the call. This form of transport makes the fact that the calls are going
over the Internet transparent to the end user.

Williams Communications (www.williamscommunications.com)
has announced that Corvis Corp. (www.corvis.com)
and Avici Systems Inc. (www.avici.com)
are two of the latest participants in a series of field trials that push optical
technology to 2.4 terabits per second (tbps) within a commercial fiber optic
network. The trials will begin early this year and pair Corvis CorWave suite of
all-optical products and Avici’s Terabit Switch/Route (TSR) platform with the
Williams Multi-Service Broadband Network on a stretch of fiber optic route from
Houston through Atlanta to Herndon, Va. Additional routes will be announced
shortly, with commercial deployment of the new technology on the Williams
network expected as early as the second half of 2000.

The Corvis system allows the transmission of optical signals up to 3,200
kilometers without electrical regeneration. During the trial with Williams, the
base system will begin at 400 gigabits per second (gbps) and scale seamlessly to
2.4tbps without in-field upgrades. The trial of Avici’s TSR will enable Williams
to evaluate the integration of packet-based and core optical technologies

The 2.4tbps capacity represents a 30-fold increase over the capacity of
current fiber optic networks, according to Williams. This will allows additional
capacity to be provisioned on demand as a carrier’s demand grows rather than the
provisioning happening over a period of months, as it does with carriers using
more traditional network architecture.