SBC upgrades optical Ethernet

SBC has enhanced its optical Ethernet service with improved service-level agreements, a lower-speed option and a price reduction.

SBC's Optical Ethernet MAN service (Opt-E-MAN) offers point-to-point, point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-multipoint connectivity for customers interconnecting offices in a metropolitan area. Opt-E-MAN is a switched service offered in 19 metropolitan areas in SBC's 13-state region.

RBOCs such as SBC are filling out their Ethernet portfolios to meet demand from corporate customers looking for more cost-efficient and bandwidth-flexible alternatives to legacy frame relay, ATM and private line services. BellSouth next year plans to turn up metropolitan multipoint Ethernet offerings that support multiple service classes per port to enable more reliable voice and video transmission for businesses. And Verizon recently said it plans to add three service classes to its switched Ethernet services, as well as other enhancements.

One point is Ethernet's lower cost per bit and range of bandwidth options. Generally, Ethernet costs $900 to $1,000 per month for 10M bit/sec throughput, seven times the bandwidth of a 1.5M bit/sec, $400- to $500-per-month frame relay T-1. A 100M bit/sec Ethernet pipe costs about the same as a 45M bit/sec ATM link - about $5,000 per month.

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SBC has enhanced its optical Ethernet service with improved service-level agreements, a lower-speed option and a price reduction.

SBC's Optical Ethernet MAN service (Opt-E-MAN) offers point-to-point, point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-multipoint connectivity for customers interconnecting offices in a metropolitan area. Opt-E-MAN is a switched service offered in 19 metropolitan areas in SBC's 13-state region.

RBOCs such as SBC are filling out their Ethernet portfolios to meet demand from corporate customers looking for more cost-efficient and bandwidth-flexible alternatives to legacy frame relay, ATM and private line services. BellSouth next year plans to turn up metropolitan multipoint Ethernet offerings that support multiple service classes per port to enable more reliable voice and video transmission for businesses. And Verizon recently said it plans to add three service classes to its switched Ethernet services, as well as other enhancements.

One point is Ethernet's lower cost per bit and range of bandwidth options. Generally, Ethernet costs $900 to $1,000 per month for 10M bit/sec throughput, seven times the bandwidth of a 1.5M bit/sec, $400- to $500-per-month frame relay T-1. A 100M bit/sec Ethernet pipe costs about the same as a 45M bit/sec ATM link - about $5,000 per month.

These economics are helping to drive Ethernet service revenue, currently at $6 billion, to $20 billion or better by 2008, according to research firms IDC and Infonetics.

As a further enticement, SBC is improving the SLAs on both grades of service of Opt-E-MAN, Bronze and Silver. The enhanced SLAs apply to all three configurations of the service.

The Bronze SLA now limits latency to a delay of no more than 35 millisec one way, down from 65 millisec. For the Silver, jitter is limited to less than 15 millisec one-way, end-to-end, down from 20 millisec.

Both service grades have network service availability guarantees of 99.95%. Packet-delivery rate guarantees are 99.5% for Bronze and 99.9% for Silver.

Although no timeline for rolling it out exists, SBC also hopes to offer a Gold tier of service for Opt-E-MAN, says Bob Walter, SBC executive director of metropolitan data services. "Once applications catch up with transport we might offer Gold," Walters says. "The two grades are now taking care of the majority of application requirements."

SBC has also lowered the bandwidth and price entry point to Opt-E-MAN from 10M to 5M bit/sec. The 5M bit/sec rate option targets low-speed frame and ATM customers.

SBC also lowered the price of Opt-E-MAN services by as much as 56%. For example, a 100M bit/sec port with a 100M bit/sec committed information rate (CIR) costs $1,775 per month for a five-year contract, down from $2,925. A 1G bit/sec port with a 1G bit/sec CIR costs $3,425 per month, a 36% drop from the previous price of $5,350.

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