Bit By Bit, DSL Making Local Headway
August 25, 1998
In a twist on the phrase that appears on car mirrors,
DSL service may be closer than it appears.
In recent months, digital subscriber line service
deployment has appeared to get a kick in the pants.
And the benefit to IT managers is that they may soon
have DSL service available as an economically priced,
high-speed access technology for telecommuters and for
connecting small offices.
While all the regional Bells are rolling out services, most
of the excitement these days is coming from the
competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs). The factors
that have made it easier for CLECs to deploy DSL
service are what has re-energized DSL.
For example, some CLECs say they now have better
working relationships with incumbent carriers. "We've
seen a lot more cooperation from Bell Atlantic and Pac
Bell," said Ann Zeichner, vice president of sales and
marketing at NorthPoint Communications.
Relations haven't always been cozy and cooperative
between incumbent carriers like the Bells and
competitive carriers like NorthPoint.
While the Telecommunications Act of 1996 required
incumbent carriers to let CLECs collocate equipment in
central offices, sometimes the incumbent carriers claimed
that no more space was available.
"We were told [they] were out of space, but space then
opened up," Zeichner said. She attributed such moves
by the incumbent carriers as trade-offs that would in
turn permit them to enter in-state long distance markets.
According to some industry experts, the incumbent
carriers are trying to show state regulators they should
be allowed to compete in the long distance market
because they are meeting the terms of the
Telecommunications Act by opening up access to their
facilities.
With such access to facilities and with the experience
gained from previous installments, "it now takes about a
dozen business days on average for NorthPoint to
provision service in California," Zeichner said.
That's still much faster than the multiple weeks or even
months it typically takes carriers to provision a T1 line.
Covad Communications Co., a data-only CLEC, also has
found the going much better in recent months. "Recent
rulings by [public service commissions] have helped,"
said Chuck McMinn, Covad's chairman. This has
allowed Covad to get into all central offices within a
region where the company is deploying service.
The ability to offer service in an entire region is crucial
for Covad, which is targeting small to medium-sized
businesses and telecommuters.
"You can serve large businesses from a few central
offices," McMinn said. "But the key to supporting the
telecommuter market is a blanket coverage strategy. We
intend to be in every central office" in a region.
Internet service provider Concentric Network Corp.,
which uses DSL services from Covad, NorthPoint and
PacBell, points to other things that are helping boost
DSL deployment.
When it comes to offering DSL services, "we want the
single largest DSL footprint," said Mark Fisher, senior
vice president and general manager of Concentric's
network services division. "We are dealing with multiple
DSL providers and multiple services."
This represents a management challenge that becomes
particularly acute for service providers in the start-up
mode.
"We interconnect with several DSL networks and we
needed something as an interface for them to all look like
one homogeneous network to us," Fisher said.
Concentric uses RedBack Network Inc.'s Subscriber
Management System (SMS) product that lets a service
provider take multiple DSL services and manage them
more easily.
SMS "smooths over the differences between the
providers," Fisher said. This helps Concentric
essentially match a user to whatever DSL service is
available in that user's area.
And Fisher said that the RedBack product helps in other
ways, too.
For instance, he said that by combining the RedBack
SMS and a remote authentication dial-in user service
(RADIUS), "we can take provisioning data that normally
has to be manually entered into a router and automate
the process."
The results of the changing climate and better
deployment tools is that DSL service is quickly
becoming available in much wider areas.
For instance, Covad last week expanded its
predominantly West Coast offerings with the
announcement of DSL service availability in New York
and Boston. And it said it had begun to build a network
and hire senior managers to deploy DSL service in
another 18 cities.
The company said it expects to have DSL service
available in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver
and Washington, D.C., by the end of 1999.
Also this month, CLEC Rhythms NetConnections said it
had completed interconnection negotiations with
incumbent carriers that would let Rhythms offer DSL
service in 10 markets by the end of 1998.
In related news, late last month, NorthPoint announced
expansion of its predominantly West Coast DSL service
into the Boston market. The company plans to roll out
service to seven to 10 cities this year.
Copyright - 1998 CMP Media Inc.
By Salvatore Salamone
<<INTERNETWEEK -- 08-24-98, p. PG23>>
[Copyright 1998, CMP Publications]
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