AT&T Promises Bandwidth Changes On The Fly
By Mary E. Thyfault, Information Week
techweb.com
AT&T is rolling out an integrated network service that provides
corporations with a single connection into the AT&T network for
leased private line, frame relay, and asynchronous transfer mode
services. The new service -- AT&T Managed Bandwidth Service --
will let users change the amount of bandwidth allocated to
applications on the fly. In the past, such changes took 45 days.
"Corporations will be able to modify the bandwidth that they are
using on a more flexible basis," says William Callahan director of
Managed Network Services for AT&T, which made the
announcement yesterday at the NetWorld + Interop trade show in
Las Vegas.
"Wow," says Christopher Nicoll, an analyst with Current Analysis in
Sterling, Va. "This will be particularly appealing in industries like
retail where they want to crank up their the bandwidth for certain
applications between September and January."
Customers will also be able to see an integrated network
management view of their network services. Scheduled for
availability in the fourth quarter are IP virtual private network
services.
AT&T is offering the service to five customers today and will make it
generally available this summer. The company says it has 25
customers who are ready to buy the service today.
Callahan predicts that, within a year, 25% of AT&T's customer base
will subscribe to the service, and within five years, 50% of
customers will subscribe. Pricing will vary depending on customer
requirements, but AT&T's goal is to make the offering less
expensive than if customers pull all the services together on their
own.
AT&T is using Newbridge Networks premises equipment to integrate the services at the customer sites. |
