[Resellers: MCI Network Constrained]
(more evidence of bandwidth crunch... -- mark)
www4.zdnet.com
MCI Communications Corp. is no longer providing high-speed circuits to most Internet access resellers, according to several affected providers.
The group of wholesale customers is the key constituency MCI agreed to sell last week to Cable & Wireless PLC, along with its entire Internet backbone, for $625 million in cash. But for Internet backbone companies that resell MCI Internet services, the status of MCI's network is very much in question.
Dave Rand, chief technical officer of AboveNet Communications Inc. in San Jose, tried to buy three 45-million-bit-per-second DS-3 circuits from MCI two months ago but was told a "provisioning committee" had to approve the order. The request was recently turned down with no explanation. Rand was told he could wait an indeterminate amount of time for a smaller 21-megabit circuit.
"We requested capacity in any U.S. city," said Rand, who already has several MCI DS-3 lines. "There was no problem two years ago."
Geoff Williams, manager of Internet engineering at Electric Lightwave Inc. in Vancouver, Wash., was equally frustrated in his attempts to buy a DS-3 circuit from MCI in Los Angeles. "ELI has been having a lot of difficulty getting delivery of [DS-3] ports from MCI on the West Coast," he said.
A consensus is growing among Internet resellers that MCI is either low on access ports to connect new high-speed lines or is nearing capacity on its network - since there appears to be no shortage of DS-3 circuits for corporate customers, which are often combined two or four on a single port because they generally don't use all their allocated bandwidth.
Adding ports costs about $15,000 apiece for hardware, but that capital expenditure can be quickly recovered. A single, full DS-3 circuit generates $20,000 to $70,000 per month in revenue, experts said.
Fred Briggs, chief engineering officer at MCI, denied there are capacity problems with the core 622-megabit-per-second network. "We continue to provide DS-3 service for anybody looking for it," he said.
But that wasn't the case even a year ago when PSINet Inc. was unsuccessful in ordering circuits from MCI. "They wouldn't, or couldn't, deliver. They've got a totally constrained backbone," said Pete Wills, chief operating officer of PSINet.
The questions of network availability came out as MCI agreed to sell the Internet backbone, engineering staff and 1,300 Internet service provider (ISP) customers to Cable & Wireless, pending the close of the WorldCom Inc.-MCI merger.
Richard Yalen, chief executive officer of Cable & Wireless Inc. - the U.S. company - said he is aware of some constraints on the MCI network and that it appears to be a port availability problem. "I don't see it as a major issue," he said, adding that Cable & Wireless has aggressive buildout plans to solve any bandwidth holdups.
Under last week's deal, MCI will divest its Internet backbone - 15,000 ports and 40 peering relationships as well as all routers and switches to run the network. MCI will continue to provide the leased lines for the network and rent back the backbone services from Cable & Wireless to serve its corporate customers. MCI also agreed to a two-year noncompete clause for the 1,300 ISP customers being transferred in the deal.
Cable & Wireless' backbone is currently a bit player on the U.S. wholesale scene, with 42 points of presence and several hundred customers. The MCI backbone will bring an additional 450 points of presence and $220 million in revenue. |
