AT&T WorldNet still mending dial-up net
$60 million investment leaves 21 cities in need of
additional upgrade work.
By DENISE PAPPALARDO
Network World, 07/05/99
BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - AT&T
WorldNet is still trying to keep up
with increasing demands on its
dial-up Internet access network, despite $60 million
worth of upgrades this year.
While AT&T WorldNet claims that most capacity issues
on its nationwide dial-up Internet access network have
been resolved, point-of-presence (POP) sites in 21 cities
remain at full capacity. Tapped-out capacity means poor
service for dial-up Internet access customers.
"That's a significant amount of cities that AT&T still
needs to upgrade," says Amanda McCarthy, an analyst at
Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., consultancy.
Many ISPs have trouble keeping up with growing user
demands on their networks, but it's expected that larger
ISPs will do a better job of pushing out modem and
infrastructure deployments, she says.
Working on it
Since March, which marked the peak of trouble on
AT&T WorldNet's dial-up network, the ISP has
completed POP upgrades in dozens of cities stretching
across 24 states (NW, March 15, page 1).
The upgrades have included deploying 10,000 modems
per month, as well as adding more phone numbers and
trunks to handle thousands of new customers.
"There will always be issues across every network about
keeping up with demands," says Michael Chaplo, vice
president of marketing for AT&T WorldNet. "What
we've done is taken care of issues that we've had across
the network."
Not in all cases, however. Of the nearly two dozen cities
that are still in need of upgrades, four were supposed to
see those improvements in March.
Hackensack, N.J., Hayward, Calif., Redwood City, Calif.,
and Seattle were known to be out of capacity three
months ago and are still in the process of being
upgraded.
When a POP is out of capacity, dial-up users will
experience frequent busy signals, failed connection
messages or dropped sessions when they connect. This is
especially frustrating to business customers who use
AT&T WorldNet's dial-up service to access their
corporate virtual private networks, download e-mail or
simply search the Internet.
One AT&T WorldNet dial-up customer who complained
of service problems in March says things have now
gotten better.
"I don't hear the lunch room complaints that I used to,"
says Scott Rice, vice president of operations at
Colorifics, a Westerville, Ohio maker of dance costumes.
However, Rice says AT&T still needs to work on
customer service.
"We just received a letter on Monday telling us that on
Wednesday we have to start using a new access number,"
he says. "It would have been nice to get more than a few
days warning."
Where the trouble started
In addition to frustrated business users, AT&T WorldNet
also has to deal with consumers who share the same
dial-up network. In fact, AT&T WorldNet's heavy push
into the consumer market in January contributed to many
of the ISP's capacity troubles.
In January, AT&T WorldNet started offering unlimited
Internet access for $21.95 per month, an offer that also
includes 30M bytes of disk space for a personal Web
page and six individual e-mail accounts. AT&T officials
view the program as a success and cite 100,000 new
customers in the first quarter alone. But AT&T's
network was not prepared to handle that many users and
buckled under the pressure.
Now AT&T WorldNet has another consumer push
underway. Starting this week, the company is lowering
its monthly Internet access service rate to $19.90 for
customers who are also using AT&T long-distance
services, an offer that could set off another surge of new
users.
Ready and waiting
Chaplo insists that most of AT&T WorldNet's 650 POPs
are better prepared to handle big bursts in new customer
traffic. The ISP has added new modems that bring V.90
56K bit/sec support to the majority of cities in which
AT&T WorldNet offers service, he says. The company is
working even more closely with AT&T Local Services
to stay ahead of the curve by installing new trunks at its
POPs in major metropolitan areas.
The trunks are installed and waiting for the day when
metropolitan-area POPs approach capacity, he says.
AT&T WorldNet is also beefing up its number of POPs
by more than twofold through its acquisition of IBM
Global Network, which was finalized last month.
AT&T WorldNet is adding IBM Global Network's 1,400
worldwide POPs to its dial-up infrastructure, Chaplo
says. The service provider would not say how many IBM
POPs have already been added to AT&T WorldNet's
network, but does expect full integration to be complete
this year. o |
