New Edge offers frame over DSL

New Edge Networks announced Wednesday a national Frame Relay over DSL service that the company says will deliver big cost savings for users.

The little-known service provider is teaming with Covad Communications to provide the service.

New Edge’s Frame Relay over DSL service offers the benefit of a reliable data service at a lower service rate than traditional frame, the company says.

“Frame relay over DSL is about half the price of standard frame service,” says Dan Moffat, president and CEO at New Edge Networks. “It lowers the average cost per location as much as 50% to 75%.”

Frame relay may be a mature technology “but there are new ways of delivering the service with significant cost savings,” he says.

The service will allow smaller companies that may only need fractional T-1 bandwidth to now subscribe to frame relay. As sub-T-1 frame relay rates have consistently gone up over the past 12 to 24 months, frame over DSL may also be attractive to large businesses that have branch offices with lower bandwidth requirements.

“There haven’t been as many reliable (data) solutions for small and medium-size businesses,” say Rod Woodward, analyst at consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. “New Edge is expanding its footprint and offering small businesses a proven technology that’s affordable.”

The service provider is not the first to offer frame relay over DSL and in fact supports some of the largest carriers’ frame-over-DSL offerings, including those of AT&T, MCI and SBC. But up until now, New Edge has not offered this service directly to business users.

New Edge has been building up its network through acquisitions since the company launched in 1999.

The service provider acquired business customers from @Work Networks, the business services division of @Home early last year and in October acquired more than 1,000 Cable & Wireless data customers. New Edge made the deal after Cable & Wireless announced it would only serve U.S. customers that have multinational service needs. Now that Cable & Wireless is exiting the U.S. completely, New Edge is reportedly in talks with the international carrier to acquire additional customers.

Although New Edge has acquired a large number of users from national players it primarily focuses on offering data services to business users and other carriers in second-tier and third-tier markets. This is why the carrier is teaming with Covad to support its Frame Relay over DSL offer, which provides DSL services mainly in larger U.S. cities.

New Edge calls this a national service, although the carrier acknowledges that it reaches about 75% of the U.S. geographically. But New Edge also offers traditional frame relay services and can reach most areas where DSL is not available.