ACCESS DEVICE HELPS CARRIERS OFFER MID-SPEED BROADBAND

By Toby Weber

In an attempt to enable carriers to serve their small and medium-sized businesses more cost-effectively, Chelmsford, Mass.-based Integral Access this week is set to announce a new module for its PurePacketOUTburst -SB integrated access device (IAD) that can inverse multiplex three T-1 lines.

By inverse multiplexing these connections, the 3xDS3 module can handle up to 4.5 Mb/s of data throughput and 48 simultaneous voice calls, appearing to a carrier as a single link to the customer.

This lets service providers offer a bandwidth service between the 1.5 Mb/s of a T-1 and 45 Mb/s of a T-3, filling a hole for small and medium-sized business or satellite offices that have outgrown the smaller offering but don't need all the bandwidth of an expensive T-3, said Ed Harper, senior product marketing manager for Integral Access.

“There is just a gulf between a single T-1 and DS-3,” Harper said. “If a service provider is forced to provide a customer with DS-3, the cost is just huge.”

Indeed, the cost is significant for the customer, who might balk at an upgrade to T-3 because it costs thousands of dollars more per month than T-1 access. It's also expensive for the service provider. DS-3 service requires a fiber connection to a customer — something that is not cost-efficient in some cases, according to Mike Rouleau, senior vice president of marketing for Time Warner Telecom, an Integrated Access customer that plans to deploy the new module.

“[With the new Integrated Access module,] I can go above T-1 and not have to build fiber, and to the customer this looks like one service,” he said. “With this particular product, you do open up to customers you normally wouldn't have talked to or approached before.”

Of course, inverse multiplexing of T-1 lines is not completely new. Other vendors, such as Carrier Access and Accelerated Networks, also have IADs with this functionality (see table).

But the Integral Access system differs from these in that it uses IP/MPLS all the way to the customer, including voice transport over MPLS, Harper said.

This allows bandwidth to be provisioned more effectively than TDM or ATM-based systems, he said. When a voice line isn't being used, that bandwidth automatically can be used for another function such as data or video transmission.

Because it is part of an IP-based system, analysts say the new module, Integral Access IAD, which has a base price of less than $1400, will appeal mostly to competitive carriers, integrated communications providers and other providers constructing advanced networks.

“By having the capability to take out to a customer a certain amount of bandwidth, you have a lot of flexibility built into an infrastructure component that positions you differently in the market and meets customer needs going forward,” said Time Warner Telecom's Rouleau.

The Integrated Access system has another feature that could appeal to these carriers: remote provisioning, which helps newer carriers avoid costly truck rolls, according to Bettina Tratz-Ryan, senior analyst for Gartner Dataquest.

“They want to get into the market fairly quickly and cost-effectively,” she said. “By remote provisioning, you can gain efficiencies very quickly. In the long run, a carrier will gain a lot of cost effectiveness from this.”

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