Equant launches DSL for IP VPN users

International carrier Equant this week will announce a broadband access option that it says could save its managed IP VPN customers up to 30% per month vs. using dedicated T-1 lines.

Equant also says its DSL Access option - initially available in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S. - will eliminate for customers the hassle of dealing with multiple DSL providers.

"While DSL is still not ubiquitously available, this is a good move on [Equant's] part," says Brownlee Thomas, an analyst at Giga Information Group. "This service addresses bandwidth bottlenecks, which are always in the local loop, for small-office users."

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

International carrier Equant this week will announce a broadband access option that it says could save its managed IP VPN customers up to 30% per month vs. using dedicated T-1 lines.

Equant also says its DSL Access option - initially available in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S. - will eliminate for customers the hassle of dealing with multiple DSL providers.

"While DSL is still not ubiquitously available, this is a good move on [Equant's] part," says Brownlee Thomas, an analyst at Giga Information Group. "This service addresses bandwidth bottlenecks, which are always in the local loop, for small-office users."

Equant is targeting customers who want more bandwidth than they get from dial-up but find dedicated T-1 lines too expensive. While it will vary from country to country, the DSL option will cost customers 20% to 30% less per month than dedicated T-1 access but provide the same transmission speed, says Gopi Gopinath, senior vice president for data services at Equant.

In the U.S., Equant is teaming with Covad Communications and SBC to provision DSL to its IP VPN customers. Overseas, Equant is working with different service providers in each country.

Equant, which offers its IP VPN service in 140 countries, plans to extend DSL access to France and Germany by mid-year and to make it available in more countries in the second half of the year.

"It's a very tricky proposition to offer DSL support across multiple regions," says Camille Mendler, research director at The Yankee Group. It is difficult to support consistent service levels and performance guarantees when dealing with multiple local providers, she says.

"This is a headache that many businesses would be interested in handing over to Equant," she adds.

One headache Equant still is trying to cure, though, is a lack of performance guarantees.

"The fact is we are not able to get [service-level agreements] from the [DSL] service providers," Gopinath says. "Until we have a reasonable number of providers with SLAs, we cannot offer [performance guarantees] to our customers."

Toyota, which links its dealerships via a 1,000-site VPN, says it would like to use DSL at some locations, but the lack of performance guarantees prevents it from doing so.

"We considered DSL to reduce costs, but were unable to get meaningful SLAs for network availability or [mean time to repair] on DSL at the time we rolled out the network," says Bill Strickland, national technology manager for IS LAN/WAN services.

For now, Strickland uses fractional and full T-1s at all his sites.

Although Equant doesn't offer SLAs, customers can use its WebVision customer service portal to view traffic utilization statistics on an hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Equant is not the first carrier to offer DSL access for its IP VPN users, but it appears to be the first to support DSL to VPN services in multiple countries. WorldCom announced a similar option in September, although it is available in only 55 U.S. markets. AT&T also offers DSL access to its IP and IP Enabled Frame Relay service, but only in the U.S. today.