Teddy, the italicized part of your message, especially the part about leasing of T1s (which in itself is in many ways counter-intuitive to the IP over optical model. Their early offerings demonstrate that even the newly enlightened purveyors in the IP WAN space will attempt to hold on to the conventional metrics associated with packaging bandwidth, and the associated pricing references. Granted, there will probably be some formula predicated on "price minus x percent," but still...
I followed some of Enron's developments earlier on. In March I read the advance April issue of Gordon Cook's "Cook Report on Internet" which contained a lengthy interview with the Enron engineering staff. The Cook Report is a subscription based newsletter.
cookreport.com
While I can't post the entire article here, you can go to the abstract itself, and get an idea of what it covered, at:
cookreport.com
The press releases that have come out recently are strikingly deceiving in several ways, IMO. For one thing, they do not give a sense for the upside capabilities that this network is capable of.
Perhaps, for the purposes of satisfying corporate end user requirements, it said it all when they outlined the provisioning of T1s and DS2s (a DS2 is the equivalent of four (4) T1s, operating at 6.3 Mb/s), reserving the higher capacity potential for incumbent carriers and other service providers, and related specialized service organizations, like Real Networks. See the abstract.
In any event, I was quite unimpressed with the way Enron presented itself in these preliminary releases.
After giving this matter some more thought, I've come to my own conclusion that their stated superiority next to LVLT and QWST, despite the latter two's dependence on ATM in some areas, is overdone to the point of being absurd.
Me thinks that the IP thing, once again, as in so many other cases where the chips and cola kids have taken over the controls, has gone unduly, and disproportionately, to their head. LVLT's and QWST's networks, as well as FRO's and others, will prove to be immensely successful IP transports, despite their inclusion of ATM, SONET, Frame Relay, or even International Morse, if they have a call for it. The movement closer to an all IP network fabric will take place in these other carriers, as market dynamics dictate, to be sure. But at the present time they are not about to cut off their noses to spite their faces, solely for the sake of being able to say, "We are an all IP Network."
In fact, to avoid these formats, solely for the sake of IP purity, would lead to a Pyrrhic kind of victory at best. At worst, they may not be able to get off the ground. I say this because other carriers, like LVLT and QWST, are enjoying a growing level of sales of T1s, OC3s, and OC-12s right now, even prior to their IP platforms being ready for prime time. These sales are crucial to their bottom lines and EBITDA performance, for, without them, they would have drastically less to show for their trouble, at the present time.
[At the same time, they are showing the other dominant carriers what competition in the upper bandwidth tiers could really be like, and the incumbents are finding this to be a brutal, and horrifically awakening, experience.]
Enron has already shown this to be the case, as well, in some roundabout way, by their introductory offer to support T1s and DS2s to end users. These are not only circuit switched derivatives that must be sent to end users through TDMs, in nature, but they are framed and suitable for digital cross connecting (through a DACS), to boot.
In short, Enron's knocking of the other contenders solely because they use ATM in their meshes and overlays, was a poor decision for Enron to make, IMO. Having said all of this, I still wish them all the luck and good fortunes going forward. They are going to need it.
.
As an aside, I think that it is close to being astonishing that Enron would have their finished designs founded on the use of CIEN and CSCO products operating in the gigabit (okay, multi-hundred gigabit?) ranges, when only momentarily after their plans are made known, Monterey and Corvis show up on the scene with new optical wavelength routing features boasting multi-terabit capabilities. Comments welcome.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
