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Technology Stocks : Global Crossing - GX (formerly GBLX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: akmike who wrote (10637)	4/14/2001 9:02:05 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15615

"... I have imagined that GX's network would cut down on the # of carrier hotels which a large user's traffic would need to visit. Is this correct? If so, does a carrier or large user, lose some flexibility by dealing with GX as a trade-off for other efficiencies ..." Of course, the extent to which your supposition would hold true would depend on the proximity to GX pops, or more specifically, the proximity to COLOs and Carrier Hotels in which GX has a presence. Colos, by design, do not belong to a single carrier, per se. So, despite the fact that GX might have a national footprint they still reside in colos and hotels where others must exchange traffic with them. While it is possible to home directly to a GX pop, the likelihood is (especially for carrier customers) that you will instead get handed off to them by your local provider at a hotel/colo/exchange point, before your traffic ever hits one of their own locations. But let's take it to the next step, and say that they do have sovereign offices on a ubiquitous basis. What you are suggesting would require a level of monolithic connectivity that would be, IMO: (1) impractical, using today's distribution of service providers' networks and geographic serving areas. Here I' referring not only to GX, but to the local access providers who must connect to them as well; (2) too expensive if a single carrier elected to go it alone. One of the savings that the larger MNOs (thanks Martin) have in their favor is that they "don't" have to build out to the end user themselves; and, (3) unattractive to users and carriers alike, because of the need for diversity and redundancy. Anyone who is going to spend upwards of several million dollars per annum for an OC12, say, will also want to protect it at every point along the way. This would require bringing service to them through diverse and redundant means, including separate local loop and colo provisions, where possible. For example, an enterprise user, say a bank or a large securities firm, that leases an OC-12 service from NY to London will have both ILEC and CLEC/dark-fiber access to at least two different points of presence where the subsea provider also has presence, on both sides of the pond. Furthermore, in the case of GX, and unlike other subsea carriers, I've not seen a statement from them concerning a preferred local loop provider, with the exception of last year's stated intentions to use Telergy in a limited number of markets when their local fiber builds are completed. But for the moment if you have a loop to GX it's on an individual case basis, and you might very easily be using two different providers to get there, via two separate colos. In a more global sense, one could begin to envisage a larger, virtual core that attaches dynamically via optical switching, which could make your scenario unfold more rapidly. But transport is still transport and costs money, even if it is done with mirrors and key strokes. But here again, there are simply too many points on the map, making it difficult to cover all the bases. Hence, it would be difficult to support your hypothesis, universally. Comments and corrections welcome. FAC