I have a significant point to make about Williams and Charlotte's Web, but like most of my points it is very involved and requires significant background preparation. Those willing to accept the challenge will find it interesting, I'm sure.
First some background:
Williams Communications reentered the telecommunications business in January 1998. Here is what they said in their announcement:
"Williams had sold the long-distance portion of its telecommunications business to WorldCom for $2.5 billion in January 1995, agreeing not to invade WorldCom's turf for three years.
But Williams, which retained a strand of fiber throughout the 11,000-mile network, is re-entering the market and planning to expand to 18,000 miles by early 1999."
Message 3096914
At that same time, Williams bought $150 Million in Core ATM switches from ASND (now Lucent). This switch had an 100Gbps backplane and handled ATM at OC-48 speeds. At the time it was the fastest ATM switch on the market.
Message 3100791
See what Williams said about those switches at the time:
"The new Ascend GX 550 switches combine the scalability and capacity of a core switch with the intelligence, service capability and cost-effectiveness of an edge switch."
"The Williams current cell switching infrastructure of OC-12 core capacity will be able to cost-effectively deliver OC-48 core capacity switching, as well as advanced multi-class; and multimedia services, by the end of 1998."
Message 3094125
Williams passed the 26,000 mile mark in January, 2000
siliconinvestor.com is planning to extend that to 33,000 miles
Message 14161311
Now some general background on ATM. In this April 1999 article, titled "Who has the winning strategy" the following information is mentioned:
"Lucent purchased Ascend Communications for its installed base of ATM switches;"
""Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), ATM and IP over ATM are going to be the issues that drive these competitive players,""
"Whether the router or the ATM switch will be at the core of the network is an on-going religious debate within the industry."
"As a result of its pending $20-billion acquisition of Ascend, Lucent has bought its way into being the ATM player, with both the GX550 core switch and CBX500 multiservice edge switch in its stable, Skorupa said. Nolle agreed: "Lucent now has an incumbency in the ATM networks of almost every one of the major players. That's worth $20 billion because without it, Lucent would have had to build a product from scratch and fight to establish it in a marketplace where Cisco is already established because of its deal with AT&T"
telecoms-mag.com
Robertson Stevens also had a strategic background article on Carrier Class ATM
nextgenerationnetworks.com
From my recent comparisons of Aranea and Pluris, Juniper, and Avici, you will note that ONLY ARANEA appears to have ATM support, as well as industry leading port densities and many other advantages. Aranea also supports POS (Packet over SONET), but also supports DWDM, bypassing the SONET ADMs
Message 14400162
Message 14419112
NOW, FINALLY HERE COMES THE POINT.
Williams committed to ATM in it's network, using ASND ATM switches at OC-48 speeds. Now they want to move to OC-192, position themselves for the Metro market with GE support, AND handle IP and Voice data as well. LU never upgraded the ASND GBX550 switches (to my knowledge anyway) to handle OC-192 and GE.
How does Williams move their network to the next generation? They need a next generation switch/router that supports ATM and GE as well as IP. Remember they had a "concept" network running in Alabama and Mississippi, with Sycamore and those LU ATM switches, and without use of SONET ADMs.
Message 14406686
If Williams paid ASND $150 million when their network was 11,000 miles, how much will they have to spend to upgrade that ATM equipment to OC-192 on their 33,000 mile network?
Who do we know that has their Switch/router already in Beta with Williams, and from the August CWNT presentation to FSVK that Beta test has been SUCCESSFULLY PASSED?
The rewards from just this Williams network could be HUGE to Charlotte's Web. And there are other major players out there with ATM networks needing upgrading as well. |
