Resale Channel: ATM Added to Wholesale Data Lineup

Posted: 08/2000

ATM Added to Wholesale
Data Lineup
By Khali Henderson

The big daddy of the data world, ATM service, is being sold by major network operators on a wholesale basis to carrier customers as a cost-effective backbone-building strategy. With the expanding data requirements of enterprises, ATM’s large capacity, efficiencies and multiservice support may be on the verge of becoming a true resale opportunity for resellers serving multilocation clients with multimedia needs.

In large measure due to its capabilities as an underlying transport technology for new IP, voice, video and VPN applications, demand for ATM is projected to grow 25 percent per year over the next three years, according to researchers at Vertical Systems Group
(www.verticalsystems.com). ATM services, they say, surpassed $1 billion last year.

Applications

The bandwidth requirements for data traffic within commercial organizations have been increasing steadily for some time, both in LANs and in WANs. Workstations have been used to introduce multimedia applications to the desktop, including components of voice, video and image, as well as growing amounts of data.

This development requires networks of greater bandwidth with the capability of handling multiservice traffic on the same network. ATM is a high-speed networking technique for public networks capable of supporting many classes of traffic. It uses short fixed-length packets called cells. Fixed-length cells simplify switching at high speeds and reduce delay and jitter, making it capable of supporting delay-sensitive services such as voice, video and data traffic.

ATM is available in several service level categories, each one suited to particular applications.

According to the ATM Forum
(www.atmforum.com), constant bit rate (CBR) service is ideal for any data, text or image transfer application that requires a fully reserved channel. Examples include video conferencing; interactive audio such as telephony; audio/video distribution such as television, distance learning or pay-per-view; and audio/video retrieval such as video on demand or an audio library.

Variable bit rate (VBR) service is suitable for any application that can benefit from statistical multiplexing or which can tolerate or recover from potential and random packet loss. Real-time VBR service can be used by native ATM voice with bandwidth compression and silence suppression. Non-real-time VBR can be used for data transfer and frame relay interworking.

Available bit rate
(ABR) service provides economical support to applications that have vague requirements for throughput and delay and require a low cell loss ratio. Examples include critical data transfer, super computer application and data communications such as remote procedure call, distribute file service and computer process swapping. Another example is LAN interconnection/internetworking services, which are driving the business service market for ATM.

Finally, unspecified bit rate (UBR) service offers a solution for less demanding applications, such as support for remote terminals as in telecommuting, background file transfer, or applications that rely on store-and-forward networks, such as messaging. These applications take advantage of any spare bandwidth and profit from reduced tariffs.

Backbone

Wholesale ATM services are available primarily from the Big Three long-distance carriers. Other wholesalers include Williams Communications
(www.williamscommunications.com) and Global Crossing Ltd.
(www.globalcrossing.com). On the metro front, WorldCom Inc.
(www.wcom.com) and BellSouth Interconnection Services
(www.interconnection.bellsouth.com) are two possible suppliers.

“Most wholesale ATM customers are using it as a backbone application. It’s a fairly cost-effective way to build backbone,” says Jay Cleveland, senior product manager of ATM for WorldCom. He says that creating a mesh network using OC-3 private lines is much more expensive than simply leasing a line into an ATM cloud.

ATM service is priced based on the number of access ports and permanent virtual circuits (PVCs) used. Economies over private lines are achieved because of the virtual nature of ATM connections (see pricing comparison diagrams, page 72).

“ATM is a powerful service for building and interconnecting backbone networks as well as for carrier’s carrier applications,” says Brian Newby, director of wholesale and ISP marketing with Sprint Business
(www.sprintbiz.com). “For example, resellers can use Sprint Wholesale ATM to connect their own ATM, frame relay or IP switches across the country, maximizing the efficiency and utilization of their facilities.”

Carrier customers, Newby says, can lower costs of their internal networks through higher bandwidth and greater network efficiency, such as prioritizing traffic to match performance and application needs, made possible by ATM. In addition, ATM enables carriers to offer a greater array of advanced services because ATM supports multiple service types.

Sprint’s wholesale ATM service is being used exclusively for backbone applications, Newby says. Similarly, the carrier services division of Global Crossing rolled out its wholesale ATM offer last fall, also with backbone connectivity in mind.

“ATM delivers the speed and quality of service that our carrier customers demand. It’s a carrier technology designed for carrier-level service,” says Anthony J. Palma, vice president of carrier marketing for Global Crossing North America. “ATM is an attractive alternative to private line networks for many facilities-based carriers, data CLECs and ISPs because it can be configured to support their specific backbone requirements. Given ATM’s ability to consolidate applications onto a single network, these customers will also be able to trim their costs while expanding their access to highly available, scalable bandwidth.”

The service offers transport over an OC-48 backbone at speeds of NxT1 up to OC-12 by using inverse multiplexing over ATM (IMA). This technique enables a carrier, for example, to aggregate multiple T1s instead of moving to a T3 at 10 times the cost.

In addition to scalability, says product manager Annmarie
Buscaglia, ATM offers speed-to-market advantages not found in fixed circuits. If a carrier has a T1 private line and needs a DS-3, it takes 30 to 45 days to provision, she says, but with ATM’s virtual connection, it can be incremented in three to five days.

Map: 4 Node Fully Meshed T3 ATM Network

Map: 4 Node Fully Meshed T3 Private Line Network

While most ATM networks today are confined to the United States, network operators are beginning to extend their networks offshore, in turn, enabling carrier customers to expand their reach.

“The community of data traffic changes global business,” says WorldCom’s Rick Gibbens, vice president of product management. “The Internet is driving bandwidth demand between countries and continents.”

For this reason, he says WorldCom is building an ATM footprint internationally to enable carriers to send traffic between two non-U.S. countries without backhauling over a private line to the ATM cloud in the United States. “Customers in the next three to five years are going to need ATM connectivity offshore. They can either buy IPLs [initial program loads] or move to our type of network,” he says.

WorldCom also is looking at ATM connectivity on the metro level in competition with ILECs. Metro ATM services enable customers to connect business sites in the same LATA at significantly reduced rates compared to alternate methods.

This also is a primary initiative for BellSouth Interconnection Services, the wholesale business unit for BellSouth. A carrier with significant business within BellSouth’s LATA now also has the option of aggregating local service access as an alternative to buying special access from the ILEC or a CLEC in the territory.

“We are responding to competition in our marketplace,” says BellSouth Interconnec-tion product manager Jose Blanco. “We are trying to provide more attractive Layer 2 [transport] services.”

In fact, he says, the company wants to make the offer so attractive that it will discourage competitors from building out alternative networks. To this end, the company is converting to an all-ATM network and packaging wholesale services around it.

In June, the BellSouth wholesale business unit introduced Managed Shared ATM Service that allows carriers to aggregate data traffic at lower costs. Discounts up to 54 percent are available based on volume and term commitments. The service eliminates buying special access lines one at a time by having the IXC connect to the BellSouth network through an ATM network-to-network interface. The cost to install DS-0s to five separate locations is about one-fourth the cost it would be to provision special access to each of these locations.

Additionally, Blanco says that carriers need only provide one link into a BellSouth ATM cloud even in LATAs where there might be more than one. BellSouth provides the intercloud link.

Resale

Although ATM is growing fast, it remains a distant second to frame relay, its Layer 2 cousin. Frame relay revenues were eight times those of ATM in 1999, according to Vertical Systems Group researchers, who say that frame relay continues to be rolled out at a record pace by user enterprises for worldwide data connectivity.

Hoping to capitalize on this trend, voice resellers have been actively selling frame relay services for about two years.

“It’s been a few years since resellers began selling frame relay; they are just now hitting full stride,” says Gibbens. “It’s just about time for frame relay customers to outgrow frame and be ready for ATM.”

Frame relay/ATM internetworking presents the most obvious opportunity for service providers to resale ATM, says Cleveland, explaining that ATM offers 45mbps capacity that might relieve congestion on a busy node of a frame relay network, which even at high speeds maxes out at 20mbps.

Robert Stade, ATM product manager for the network services unit of Williams, says that in addition to outgrowing capacity requirements of frame relay, users also may need another class of service provided by IP or ATM. “If it’s data where cell loss is not as important, they may want IP. If they want the quality of service not to drop, maybe ATM,” he says.

Stade says Williams’ wholesale ATM buyers to date have been larger carriers–CLECs and ILECs–that have a working knowledge of ATM and provide the specifications for the end user’s ATM network for provisioning by Williams’ team.

In contrast, most resellers do not have the need (e.g., appropriate client base) nor are they ready to bid out a standalone ATM network, Gibbens says.

“It’s obviously a big leap for [voice resellers] getting into data,” says Mike Budnick, WorldCom’s director of product management. “We have to take a twofold approach. We train them on the technology and on selling it to end users.”

WorldCom’s Gibbens says the carrier has found direct correlation between training and revenues. “We help [resellers] train their sales forces without charge. It pays back in the number of orders we receive,” he says.

WorldCom also provides resellers with sales support, technical support and customer services. This includes CPE certification to determine whether an end user’s equipment is interoperable with the carrier’s network.

AT&T’s Jim Daugherty, general manager of data services marketing, agrees that training on the technology and applications is required. “If they’ve been selling frame relay, its an easy evolution,” he says. “It’s a bit more technical than frame relay, but it has a similar infrastructure.”

Khali Henderson is editor-in-chief of
PHONE+ magazine.