Sprint is rolling out metropolitan Gigabit Ethernet offerings in its first market with the design that they will appeal to customers looking to deploy converged services at predictable prices.
Sprint is rolling out metropolitan Gigabit Ethernet offerings in its first market with the design that they will appeal to customers looking to deploy converged services at predictable prices.
Sprint announced its Ethernet services earlier this month in Las Vegas and says it will enter several other markets by year-end. Las Vegas was first because of customer demand and population density, says Rob Ryan, a product development manager at Sprint.
The services are designed to meet the needs of businesses that are moving to converged services including IP, data, video and multicast applications, Ryan says. “Customers are very interested in the simplicity and per-megabit pricing of Ethernet services compared to traditional offerings,” he adds.
Sprint Ethernet Services let users choose connectivity options from 1M up to 1G bit/sec. While Ryan won’t offer pricing, he says the service will be based on bandwidth and number of sites connected to the network.
One user finds the offer attractive.
“The prices are very competitive,” says John Meyer, manager of system and network architecture at Sierra Health Systems. Sierra is migrating from an ATM service that linked 14 sites to Ethernet Services. “We’re getting a lot more bandwidth and only paying a little more,” he says.
Sierra uses Gigabit Ethernet links at its two data center sites and a mixture of 10M and 100M bit/sec links at its remaining offices. Previously the company had 140M bit/sec connections at its data centers and up to 9M bit/sec links at its other sites.
Meyer says the company needed more bandwidth at all its sites to support a new digital radiology application. It is expected to be deployed in late April after all of Sierra’s sites have been upgraded.
Sprint’s Ethernet Services lets users set up fully meshed or point-to-point metropolitan networks. The carrier also is offering Sprint Managed Network Services options that let businesses turn over management and monitoring.
While Sprint also offers Ethernet services in Florida, Las Vegas is the carrier’s only market that supports Gigabit transmission speeds. Sprint offers local services in 18 states, where it is the incumbent local exchange carrier.
Sprint is using Nortel’s Passport 8600 and Alcatel 1696 Metro Span Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing gear to support its Ethernet Services in Las Vegas, but the carrier says it is not committed to using these vendors as it rolls out to additional markets.
And while Sprint’s Ryan didn’t want to get into the details, he says the carrier has a plan to roll out Ethernet services nationally. The carrier says it also has a plan to roll out Gigabit Ethernet services through its long-haul network.
“There will be a lot of activity from all of the [interexchange carriers] later this year,” says Roz Roseboro, program director at RHK. While AT&T and WorldCom offer some metropolitan Ethernet services, both are expected to roll out services that span the country by year-end, she says.
“The IXCs are trying to play catch up with the [regional Bell operating companies],” Roseboro says. BellSouth has a full Ethernet offer in its service area, and there also are the Ethernet local exchange carriers such as Cogent Communications and Yipes Communications with which to compete, she says.
