Today's Top Stories Frontier Communications (Nasdaq: FTR) on Tuesday begun offering wireless services to its wireline customer base through a resale arrangement with AT&T Mobility (NYSE: T). Under the terms of the previously announced arrangement that was launched last November, customers in select Frontier markets will be able to chose from AT&T's line of smartphones and have access to the wireless operator's mobile network. The wireline-centric telco, which mainly serves rural areas, hopes to attract customers by letting them bundle in wireless with their traditional DSL and POTS voice services. "Frontier customers in Middletown can now bundle AT&T wireless service with Frontier products and receive a significant monthly bundle discount," said Don Banowetz, President of Frontier Mobile & On-Network Video, in a press release announcing the service initiative. Any Frontier customer who subscribes to AT&T's wireless services will be able to access the wireless operator's 29,000 U.S. hot spots. While it's unlikely that Frontier will ever build out its own wireless service and network, the resale relationship with AT&T allows the telco quickly add another service to its roster to keep its bundled offerings competitive as it faces continual pressure from cable operators offering higher speed broadband and landline voice services. For more:
- see the release Special Report: Q2 roundup: ILECs wade through legacy-to-IP migration Related articles:
Frontier adds AT&T mobile phone service to TV, phone, Internet bundle
Frontier secures $72M Connect America loan to expand broadband reach
Frontier's DSL speed advertisements under fire from NAD
Frontier selects ETI's BSS/OSS software to support its FTTH network Read more about: AT&T
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XO Communications on Tuesday announced it has extended its network into the Toronto market, offering its suite of IP services to both business and wholesale service provider customers. Don MacNeil, chief marketing officer for XO Communications, said in a press release that the company will now be able to better target four key vertical market segments that are seeing continual growth in Toronto: finance, high-tech, media and telecommunications. "Our expansion into Canada will enable XO to provide high-capacity network services to better serve businesses like these on both sides of the border, whether they need connectivity in Toronto or high-speed access to markets in the U.S.," he said. To reach this goal, XO expanded its fiber network to Cologix's 151 Front Street West data center in Toronto. Through this relationship with Cologix, a neutral interconnection and colocation provider, the CLEC is now connected to over a dozen major data center colocation facilities, which in turn connect to more than 150 service providers throughout Canada. As a result of this expansion effort, XO will be able to offer wholesale and enterprise network services, including Internet access, MPLS-based IP/VPN, private line, Ethernet and wavelength services, scaling to speeds of up to 10 Gbps in Toronto. All of these services will run over a diverse 550-mile Toronto metro and Canadian long-haul fiber network that connects back to the United States in various locations. This expansion has implications for both XO's own U.S.-based customers and Canadian enterprises and carriers. For XO's multisite business customers, especially those that plan to establish offices in the city, they can now go to the CLEC instead of having to find another carrier inside Canada and negotiate a deal for service. Canadian enterprises that want to expand their presence in the United States can work with XO not only to cross the border but even purchase services from the service provider to connect their new locations. Likewise, Canadian carriers that were looking for an off-net connectivity provider to serve large multisite business customer opportunities will also have an alternative choice besides working with one of the large RBOCs like AT&T (NYSE: T) or Verizon (NYSE: VZ). For more:
- see the release Show coverage: COMPTEL 2012: Continuing coverage from Dallas Related articles:
XO extends 100G service reach through Equinix
XO continues to find new fortunes in Ethernet over Copper
XO Communications brings WAN services to Dickstein Shapiro
XO incorporates Ciena into its 100G metro, regional network plans
XO Communications goes live with nationwide 100G network Read more about: XO Communicatinos
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Dallas -- Integra Telecom on Monday named Martha Tate as the vice president of its wholesale services unit, one of many moves the CLEC is taking to revamp its wholesale business. In her new role at Integra, Tate will be charged with driving the growth of the CLEC's wholesale sales organization and expanding its wholesale customer base. Tate brings plenty of wholesale experience to Integra, including a recent stint at Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA), where she served as the vice president of Enterprise Sales for the cable MSO's West Division. Prior to her job at Comcast, Tate held various senior management roles at Level 3 Communications (NYSE: LVLT) and the former MFS Communications, which was later purchased by WorldCom and is now part of Verizon Business (NYSE: VZ). "Martha is a wholesale veteran, who for the last three years was at Comcast," said Kevin O'Hara, CEO of Integra Telecom, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "Prior to Comcast she was at Level 3, and prior to that she was at MFS Wholesale, so she has a heritage of fiber-based and wholesale activities." Complementing the new wholesale leadership change, Integra has also renamed its Electric Lightwave (ELI) subsidiary Integra Wholesale. In addition to realigning its wholesale business, the CLEC is enhancing its ability to deliver both its fiber-based and Ethernet over Copper (EoC) services to more customers by establishing a number of new Network-to-Network Interconnection (NNI) agreements with more service provider partners. With fiber being the preferred access method, the service provider has introduced a Loop Qualification tool that it says can target new service opportunities by determining serviceable on-net locations, supported products and network capacity. O'Hara said the Loop Qualification element helps its EoC and fiber-based customer base in two ways: It provides capabilities to monitor and optimize their Ethernet networks and provides a network operations center-like experience for its E-Line services. "Our preference is to accelerate our on-net fiber reach, so we came up with some on-net location tools," he said. "With this location tool we have pre-qualified literally thousands of near-net locations so if you're a wholesale customer or an enterprise customer or a sales guy, you can roll over the map and it will pop up which one is a green, yellow, or a red." O'Hara added that if a building comes up red, it does not mean the company won't build out fiber to it, but the cost to extend fiber facilities to that building is very high. "If, for example, there's $10,000 available spend in a building, it's a pretty a high hurdle to overcome," he said. "But if you're in a big shiny building that has $200,000 in telecom spend and it's a cheap build, we have rules to pre-approve you." No less important is the expansion of its off-net relationships with other service provider partners. Since the middle of 2012, Integra has established 10 new NNI agreements with other carriers, a move that enabled it to bring Ethernet access to almost 40,000 buildings and 1,400 partner collocations in several key metro markets including Minneapolis, Denver, Colorado Springs, Boise, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Northern California, Seattle and Portland. Throughout the rest of the year, it plans to establish other agreements with other new partners. "Our NNI strategy is very targeted in terms of going to carriers individually instead of going to exchanges," O'Hara said. "We're working on relationships with those individual carriers and getting wholesale customers to use our network where possible." Although its NNI partnerships are key for growth, Integra continues to aggressively build out its own fiber network. With that ongoing fiber build-out, the CLEC has also added a new wholesale Dark Fiber offering to complement its Ethernet and Wavelength services targeting wholesale carrier customers. For more:
- see the release Show coverage: COMPTEL Fall 2012: Continuing coverage from Dallas Related articles:
Integra Telecom partners with Metaswitch and steps into IP-based world
Integra Telecom partners with Verizon Wireless to deliver VPN wireless backup
Integra Telecom to provide Ethernet services to Washington state
Integra grows on-net fiber presence to over 2,000 buildings
Integra Telecom expands the reach of its Ethernet over Copper network Read more about: Integra Telecom
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Dallas -- tw telecom (Nasdaq: TWTC) on Monday announced it expanded its fiber network, targeting new business service opportunities in the Kansas City area with a particular focus on opportunities located north of the Missouri River and the Central Business District. By making this network expansion move, the CLEC can potentially target over 300 additional business opportunities in Kansas City. Tim Bagnieski, vice president and general manager for tw telecom in Kansas City, said what drove them to make this network expansion was the influx of new requests it has been receiving for Ethernet services. "We have seen a dramatic increase in the demand from Kansas City businesses for fiber network services, particularly business Ethernet, to deliver more and more high-tech applications such as cloud computing, telepresence and collaboration," he said in a press release announcing the latest buildout effort. The CLEC is no stranger to the Kansas City area, having delivered services there after purchasing the assets of the former Xspedius Communications in late 2006. Using Xspedius as a foundation for growth, the CLEC has since upgraded its Kansas City network to deliver Ethernet as well as integrated its systems and managed services portfolio. Ethernet continues to be a hot seller for tw telecom. In Q2 2012, the provider reported that as of the result of strong Ethernet services growth, its quarterly revenue rose 1.6 percent sequentially to $364.5 million, up from $358.9 million from Q1 2012 and 7.7 percent on a year-over-year basis from $338.4 million in the second quarter last year. For more:
- see the release Show coverage: COMPTEL 2012: Continuing coverage from Dallas Related articles:
tw telecom Q2 revenues rise 7.7% on strong Ethernet, IP VPN sales
tw telecom sets stage for network service automation
tw telecom serves up new Ethernet interconnection product
tw telecom Q1 2012 revenue grew 7.9% on Ethernet, IP/VPN sales
tw telecom ups its Minnesota colocation bandwidth Read more about: tw telecom
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Dallas -- Alpheus Communications, a regional CLEC targeting businesses and service providers in the Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston (DASH) area, on Monday extended the reach of its Ethernet service into the Rio Grande Valley. Customers in the Rio Grande region of Texas will now be able to get access to the same fiber-based and Ethernet over Copper (EoC) solutions in the DASH markets, including private-line services, dedicated Internet access (DIA), data center connectivity. Alpheus is taking a multi-pronged approach to Ethernet that includes both fiber in places where it can economically deliver build out fiber and EoC. While the CLEC's customers in this region will be subject to the same installation intervals and products, the expansion will resonate with the its multisite customers that want to work with just one provider. Offering customers the same service installation intervals and products, the new initiative will provide Alpheus' business and wholesale customers a deeper reach into South Texas. A major focus of this latest network is to productize EoC, said Scott Widham, CEO of Alpheus. Already available in 123 central offices (COs), Widham said it will enable EoC in more COs in the South Texas region. "We're putting in Overture's EoC gear into area AT&T (NYSE: T) COs so we now have enabled another 10,000 buildings with Ethernet service," Widham said, adding that they have up to 94,000 buildings qualified to get Ethernet. In addition, Alpheus plans to bring EoC into other markets in Texas it does not reach yet, including Beaumont, Victoria, Bryant College Station, and Waco. Alpheus is also addressing Mexican competitive service providers, known as concessionaires, that need an alternative cross-border interconnection point for their business clients. "There are six concessionaires of various sizes, and we do about 10 percent of our business in Mexico," said Widham. "They are very agile and move very quickly so we have interconnections with those carriers, and as they look to get connections into places like Dallas they can use us." Widham added that a number of the larger Mexican competitive carriers will then purchase IP services from MegaPath or others, but now they can establish peering points in Dallas that will allow them to peer directly with Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), which "means they can buy less access so it saves them money." On the fiber side, Alpheus is being no less aggressive. The CLEC is on target to connect another 100 buildings in Dallas and Houston to its fiber. "We're aggressively building out in these buildings and negotiating the riser rights and laterals," Widham said.
Besides expanding services for its business customer base, the new expansion is also being used to address more wholesale carrier customer opportunities. The CLEC plans to expand its off-net presence in the region by establishing new Network-to-Network Interface (NNI) agreements with existing and potentially new service provider customers. "We have a number of NNIs with big carriers and then we get their pricing tools so whether it's the SONET product or the Ethernet product everything happens very, very quickly in terms of service delivery associated with that solution," Widham said. "We have an access toolkit where we're going to start doing some fixed wireless stuff. If you want fiber, copper or wireless we're going to bring it to your location." Complementing the broadening of its Ethernet reach, Alpheus plans to embark on three new areas: managed services (i.e., VPN, firewalls and managed security), specialty products for the health care and retail chain verticals, and managed hosting services out of its data centers in select markets. "In terms of additional product development, we're really looking at going up the telecom stack, and we're looking at managed security services, and then we'll get specific in our verticals offering HIPAA compliance services for the healthcare industry and offering PCI security services for credit card transactions," Widham said. Widham said that "the next step is to get into managed hosting out of our four data centers, but we're trying to figure out where the sweet spot is because there's so much out in the market that's free." And while Widham isn't opposed to expanding outside of Texas, in the near-term he's satisfied with the growth he currently is seeing there. "When I first got into the company, I thought our growth would be by expanding into Lousiana and going into Oklahoma, but there's so much growth in Houston, and Dallas and the DASH markets that we can just play in our backyard and grow significantly," he said. "It's easier to operate in your back yard than far afield to support services that are a thousand miles away." For more:
- see the release Show coverage: COMPTEL 2012: Continuing coverage from Dallas Related articles:
Alpheus Communications attracts more reseller agents to channel program
Alpheus continues to branch out into the business service market
Alpheus Communications sees uptick in wholesale service sales, plots growth
Alpheus buys dark fiber from FiberLight to expand Dallas footprint
KDL, Alpheus and Fibertech fiber networks are up for sale Read more about: Alpheus
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COMPTEL Fall 2012: Continuing coverage from Dallas
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