AT&T offers managed DSU, inside wiring service

Sometimes it’s the “unsexy” products and services that go to work quietly in the background to save you time, money and – that nemesis of all nemeses – aggravation. That will likely be the upshot of a managed DSU-with-inside-wiring component that AT&T recently added to its AT&T Plus Family of Data Services portfolio.

The “Plus” service family adds supplemental performance measurement and reporting to the AT&T frame relay, ATM, and IP-enabled transport services. Now, configuration of an AT&T-supplied DSU/CSU (or ATM access device) and wiring are part of the deal.

Randy Fisher, AT&T “Plus” product manager, explains the rationale.

“When the local-exchange carrier brings a wire into a building, it terminates it in a certain jack.  From there, you need to connect from that jack to wherever the data center is, and customers usually have to contract for that separately or do it themselves.”

Traditionally, he says, this results in one technician terminating the access circuit, another providing the inside wiring service, and yet another delivering and installing the DSU.

So AT&T has decided to offer a DSU-install service that includes the inside wiring component. As a result, a single technician handles all the tasks, plus tests the configuration, which should theoretically result in a smoother installation, time saving, and the need to only deal with one technician instead of hiring multiple contractors.

You have to pay for the cost of the DSU, but there is no line-item charge for the wiring component.

“Sometimes less is more; we don’t want to nickel and dime [customers] to death,” Fisher says.