GTE adds T-3 frame relay service

     Irving, Texas
     Just because GTE Corp. is pursuing the business-class Internet market 
via its purchase of BBN Corp. doesn't mean it has forgotten about frame 
relay.
     Far from it. Next month, the local telecom powerhouse will start 
rolling out a series of frame relay enhancements, including new high-speed 
ports and a big expansion of its service territory.
     GTE officials last week confirmed that they will soon announce a 
T-3-speed frame relay service to complement GTEs existing T-1 and 56K/64K 
bit/sec offerings.
     The move will coincide with a change in GTE's frame relay pricing 
structure to include committed information rates (CIR), or presubscribed 
guaranteed bandwidth, on its frame relay circuits.
     Although the changes will make GTE's frame relay service look like 
most of the long-distance carriers' offerings - with charges for ports, 
permanent virtual circuits (PVC) and access channels - its prices will be 
dramatically lower than most interexchange carriers'.
     For example, the new T-3 frame relay ports will be priced at $1,300 
per month, which is substantially less than AT&T charges even for T-1 ports.
     AT&T charges $2,200 for T-1 frame relay, and the closest thing it 
offers to T-3 frame relay - a DS-3 ATM service - runs $11,000 per month 
just for the port.
     GTE already has offered some T-3 ports on its frame relay switches, 
but now has filed a tariff for the high-speed service in preparation for 
its impending announcement.
     At the same time, GTE, for the first time, will add a PVC charge based 
on CIR, which is the speed up to which frames cannot be discarded by the 
carrier network.
     Until now, GTE has been simply setting CIR at a default rate equal to 
half the port speed and even allowing customers to request additional CIR, 
all for a nominal fee of  $8 per month for each PVC. 
     'But customers started to request full, 100% CIR, so we had to 
educate customers that frame relay is not a full private line,' explained 
Lianne Iwanaga-Ohishi, GTE's senior frame relay product manager.
     Under the new price structure, the $8 charge will get new users a CIR 
up to 32K bit/sec, with 64K bit/sec CIR running $15 a month, 96K bit/sec 
CIR $22 a month, 128K bit/sec CIR $27 a month and so on.
     Existing GTE frame relay customers will be allowed to keep the old PVC 
pricing for a year while they rewrite their contracts to transition to the 
new pricing structure.
     More significantly for some users, GTE is expanding its frame relay 
service territory to include for the first time territories served by the 
former Continental Telephone Co., better known as Contel before its 1991 
purchase by GTE.
     As a result, GTE will now offer frame relay in 23 of its 28 states, 
including a dramatic widening of its territory in some states where it 
already offered the service.