An Ignoble Experiment

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Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation (MBC), an emerging middle mile provider, is responding to its wireless operator and business customers' desire for Ethernet-based services by leveraging Cyan's platforms for its regional metro network.

What drove MBC to Cyan was a need to overcome the various limitations with its existing regional TDM-based SONET transport network.

While it still does provide OC-3 and other related SONET services to local carriers, the challenge was being able to scale with its wireless operators customers' growing need for higher bandwidth at their cell sites, while creating an overall path to provide next-gen Ethernet services.

"What we have seen is a tremendous explosion of cell site backhaul requirements," said Tad Deriso, president and CEO of MBC, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "Over the last 18 months, we have turned up 70 new cell sites."

Like other wholesale operators, MBC initially offered T-1 access, but over time its customers started to demand 50 Mbps and above speeds. However, it found that its legacy Ciena platform was not suitable to satisfy its customers' new requirements.

"What we were finding on our Ethernet platform, the Ciena 6500 system, is we provision as an STS so that it's Ethernet over SONET and the overhead of that circuit was 46-47 k," Deriso said. "The cell carriers were going nuts because they could not get their full 50 Mbps, plus they needed the ability to burst and we could not do that with our existing platform."

Since MBC is an open access wholesale provider, it said it also needed a Layer 2 solution that would not expose customer virtual local area network (VLAN) traffic.

For this project, MBC deployed Cyan's Z-Series Packet-Optical Platforms and Blue Planet, an open software definable networking (SDN) orchestration platform to manage its multi-vendor network environment to control its network and automate the service provisioning process. For wireless backhaul, Blue Planet will allow MBC to orchestrate multiple layers across the backhaul link to guarantee predictable packet services performance, high availability and low latency.

What's more, the Cyan platforms are also compliant with the Metro Ethernet Forum's (MEF) Carrier Ethernet 2.0 (CE 2.0) initiative.

Deriso said that by deploying the Cyan gear, it "has been able to turn up sites for probably about 50 percent less capex than we were spending on our prior solution."

For more:
- see the release

This week's sponsors are Neustar and Spirent.

While the market for data-driven telecom analytics is expected to grow, service providers are still in the learning phase with data analytics. FierceTelecom explores the different tools and techniques that operators can use to analyze and mine their data. Download today.

2. Deutsche Telekom upgrades 2.6M customers to IP technology, sets pace for vectored DSL

By Sean Buckley

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Deutsche Telekom continues to make good on its all-IP network promise, moving nearly 3 million of its customers to the technology.

The telco said that it plans to upgrade all 20 million of its connections to IP technology by the year 2018. IP technology forms the foundation for Deutsche Telekom to deploy vectoring technology with VDSL2, two technologies that will enable it to deliver up to 100 Mbps broadband speeds on the existing copper network beginning in the second half of this year.

"We have already migrated 2.6 million customers to all-IP in Germany, which translates into over 21% of our broadband [subscribers] and almost 13% of all our fixed lines being migrated to all-IP already," said Tim Höttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, during the first-quarter earnings call. "Currently, we are migrating at a speed of roughly 45,000 to 50,000 customers per week in Germany."

In December 2012, the company said it would spend €6 billion ($7.9 billion) to build out a fiber to the cabinet (FTTC) network to expand download speeds on its copper lines from 50 to 100 Mbps.

Thus far, its hybrid fiber to the node (FTTN)-based VDSL2 and fiber to the home (FTTH) services continue to grow. During the quarter it added a total of 222,000 new lines, up from 156,000 in the same period a year ago. Fiber-based broadband coverage grew from 34 percent to 38 percent year-on-year.

Out of this group, 93,000 came from the wholesale sector, mainly due to the success of what the service provider said is the contingent model. Total fiber-optic lines increased by 53 percent within one year to over 1.7 million.

Despite the progress it made with its fiber-based broadband products, it still lost 7,000 broadband customers overall. The network buildout has gained further momentum: Coverage with fiber-optic lines grew from 34 percent to 38 percent year-on-year

For more:
- see the earnings transcript (sub. req.)
- and the earnings release

Read more about: Deutsche Telekom, Ip Technology
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3. Integra enhances public sector, nonprofit reach with MiCTA membership

By Sean Buckley

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Integra has taken another step towards advancing its government, education and healthcare sales funnels by becoming a member of MiCTA, a nationwide group purchasing organization for communications and network services.

Existing MiCTA customers will now be able to get access to Integra's array of IP-based and Ethernet services through MiCTA's procurement schedule.

Under the terms of its membership, Integra was given approval in 11 MiCTA product and service categories, including Voice Communications, Data Networking and Internet, Managed and Cloud Services and Colocation and Equipment Services.

Gaining a spot on the MiCTA schedule fits in well with Integra's growth strategy, which has been to increase its focus on mid-sized regional businesses that reside in its region.

MiCTA is just one of many government vehicles that Integra now offers its services.

Over the past year, the service provider has been continually enhancing its presence in the public sector and nonprofit industry segments, winning contract awards from the state of California's CALNET 3 initiative and securing a seat on the General Service Administration's (GSA) Region 8 contract.

Potential customers that are served under MiCTA and other government-related contracts will also be able to get access to Integra's growing set of network and service capabilities. The service provider completed an optical network route between Salt Lake City and Sacramento in January and upped its on-net data center footprint to 92 total centers.

For more:
- see the release

Read more about: Carrier Ethernet, GSA
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4. MTS' Q1 Internet revenues rise to $28M on strong APRU growth

By Sean Buckley

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Manitoba Telecommunications Systems (MTS) reported that broadband Internet services were a key revenue driver in the first quarter, rising $2.6 million to $28 million due to a 7.2 percent increase in its subscriber base and average revenue per user (ARPU) growth.

In tandem with broadband, the telco also saw gains in both IPTV and converged IP revenues. IPTV revenues rose $1.1 million to $19.4 million, driven by 8.2 percent subscriber growth, while converged IP revenues rose by $0.4 million to $6.3 million.

Over in the business sector, Allstream converged IP revenues increased 4.3 percent to $58 million. Within this segment, unified communications, hosting and security revenues were $17 million, up $0.5 million.

However, as seen by other traditional wireline telcos, local access revenues declined by $2.6 million to $56.1 million. Long distance and legacy data revenues were $15.5 million, down by $1.1 million. Long distance revenues reached $9.4 million and legacy data revenues were $6.9 million, down 9.6 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.

To prepare for future growth opportunities, the service provider expanded its on-net fiber footprint by adding 66 buildings to its IP-based fiber network during the quarter. As of the end of March, it had a total of 3,069 buildings.

Despite the gains in next-gen service revenues, overall first-quarter revenues declined by $4.8 million, or 1.3 percent year-over-year, to $369 million. EBITDA was $136 million, down by $1.0 million or 0.7 percent and EPS rose 17.4 percent to 54 cents.

"We are regaining momentum at Allstream, where IP revenue grew 4.3% during the quarter," said CEO Pierre Blouin, in the earnings release. "At MTS, we exceeded 100,000 bundled customers. This is a major milestone that reflects one of our key strategic advantages and which contributed to our strong broadband results."

Shares of MTS were listed $31.26, down 11 cents or 0.35 percent, in Wednesday morning trading on the Toronto stock exchange.

For more:
- see the earnings release (.pdf)

Special report: Wireline telecom earnings in the first quarter of 2014

5. Hibernia upgrades Trans-Atlantic submarine cable network with Ciena's 6500 platform

By Sean Buckley

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