Remember all of those trite discussions we had over whether DSL would displace T1s?
Cannibalization, it was called.
I said no, others said yes. And so it went.
Well, DSLs should be all the ILECs (and now, even CLECs) have to worry about. And they want to know where all of that backbone capacity is going to go. This article is about Cogent, but Cogent isn't alone in this game. There are a growing number of 'em coming, and they are going to wreak havoc wherever they go.
Dark Fiber may not be ubiquitous now. But it's creeping along and accelerating its footprint, with new dark players showing up on the scene every month. Even some of the bandwidth suppliers who delivered SONETized services are turning some of their attention to dark. If they don't, someone else will. And is.
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Cogent Goes For The Throat
Optical data access provider targets T-1 displacement
JASON MEYERS
internettelephony.com
Cogent Communications hopes to put a dent in the high-speed corporate access market when it turns on the first phase of a planned nationwide optical access network designed to provide new data alternatives to metro-area businesses.
The company plans to light metro fiber rings in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington this week and turn on its national backbone, all of which is built on dark fiber from Metromedia Fiber Network and Williams Communications. Cogent aims to deliver non-oversubscribed 100 Mb/s optical pipes to businesses at a flat rate of $1000 per month in an effort to unseat the reigning corporate data access method.
"We’re really offering the service to customers as a T-1 replacement," said Dave Schaeffer, founder and CEO of Cogent. "The typical T-1 is oversubscribed. We’re delivering a committed information rate for 30% to 50% less than a typical T-1 connection."
Cogent’s facilities-based network design and operational efficiencies lets it pass that kind of savings on to customers, Schaeffer said. "Typically, ISPs have built their networks as overlays—their transport facilities ride on Sonet circuits, and their connections with customers are dial-up," he said. "The ability to build a dedicated end-to-end network using Layer 3 protection that emulates the architecture of a corporate LAN on a national scale is
very unique. In our network, the protection is occurring through the core router, and the router performs optical-to-electrical-to-optical conversions."
Cogent is creating OC-48 metro area network rings using dense wave division multiplexing gear from Cisco Systems that essentially link to customers as a direct extension of their corporate network architectures.
"We did extensive market research and found that the vast majority of corporate LANs run at 100BaseT, so that’s our interface," Schaeffer said. "As additional services are required, we don’t figure out the applications—we interface."
In addition, Schaeffer said Cogent’s focus on Internet access and its flat-rate pricing help simplify the operational characteristics of its architecture network.
"We don’t meter any of the services on our network, so our billing system and OSSs are very simple," Schaeffer said. "So the costs for those are down below that of other carriers."
Opting for Layer 3 protection affects restoration to a small degree, but Schaeffer says the tradeoff will be minimal because Cogent’s intention is to transport only data services.
"Restoration times take about one second as opposed to 50 milliseconds," he said. "But if you’re building a data-centric network as opposed to a network optimized to provide voice, that’s perfectly acceptable."
One industry analyst said a potential limiting factor to Cogent’s approach is the availability of metro fiber.
"They’re in this breed of next generation access players that assume a lot of local fiber access," said David Willis, program director of the Global Networking Strategies at Meta Group. "That is going to affect the footprint they can build out."
Still, the proliferation of the Internet, as well as content storage and transport needs, will make Cogent’s offering attractive, particularly given its pricing, Willis said.
"There’s a strong play for interconnecting Internet data centers and enabling things like storage-on-demand," Willis said. "At their price points, it’s extremely attractive. It’s essentially T-1 pricing for a lot more capacity—that’s phenomenal." |
