Enterprises rely on their data centers to run business operations, service providers rely on their data centers to generate revenues by delivering network services, and content providers rely on their data centers to distribute revenue-producing content. And like their customers, data centers rely on networks. Networks are the essential part of any modern communications and they must deliver reliability, availability and high performance.  Access to these networks is where the rubber truly meets the road in the meaningful provisioning of telecom products and services. In order for telecommunications to work, networks must be accessible and provide a seamless connection, from me to you, across town, or across the globe.

Problem: Networks aren’t seamless. They aren’t always reliable and they aren’t always easily accessible. These realities are magnified when we consider local access networks – the spider web of local networks that bridge the communications interstate to the boulevard, avenue and final destination. They’re fragmented, one way, closed, too small, and often too expensive. They’re owned by multiple operators who may only control a fraction of the overall capacity. Often, they’re uncharted and unknown. This is the local access conundrum. Managing the procurement and provisioning of local access interconnections remains one of the biggest sources of indigestion in the industry today.

The result is that many network dependent industry players today look at their current service territory as the last frontier – the only potential growth market outside of M&A. They look to their current footprint and try to figure out how to sell to the customers that line their existing local access relationships or the central offices in which they are already interconnected, effectively closing their doors (and profit potential) to markets and geographies that aren’t proximate to existing service territories.  Not a particularly effective or efficient growth strategy and certainly not a competitive vote of confidence.

Filling the gap are a handful of companies that can leverage existing relationships and other access strategies to bring local access network operators and potential buyers together in a way that facilitates relatively efficient access network transparency and procurement solutions. Global Capacity, a company that specializes in access network delivery, for example, offers One Marketplace Access Exchange which is an access network solution platform that automates the design, quotation and provisioning of access networks, globally.  By creating a “marketplace” where customers and suppliers are connected by a common platform and interconnection, One Marketplace Access Exchange reduces the cost and simplifies the operation of access networks, providing transparency into access network pricing, capacity and availability across vendors and geographies. The company, however, can only provide this solution because they have so many facilities based carriers and clients, they can actually take principal position in creating access into markets that everyone seems to have difficulty with and just enable them to go there through a single interconnect.

Solving the Local Access Conundrum means addressing the fundamental issue of transparency, pulling back the covers so that, at the very least, available access is visible and accessible; capable of being defragmented, optimized and managed.  A successful solution means standardizing procurement and provisioning processes – automating a process that has traditionally been painstakingly manual, expensive, and ineffective.

Touting Tinet as the “ideal choice,” IP Networks, Inc., (IPN) a highly scalable Ethernet-Over-Fiber solutions provider, announces today its selection of the Neutral Tandem company and global carrier focused on the IP and Ethernet wholesale markets. With Tinet, IP Networks plans to strategically market its network assets to the company’s worldwide carrier partners. The company will utilize Tinet’s EtherCloud^SM service in order to offer its customer base cost effective Ethernet services outside its footprint of 50-plus carrier partners without the need to set up External Network to Network Interfaces (E-NNIs) with each provider. 

Mark Brown, Director of Sales for IP Networks, states, “IP Networks operates the largest legacy-free, Ethernet access network in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley regions connecting enterprise buildings and data centers. With EtherCloud, IP Networks can now quickly and efficiently source, price, and order services through the dedicated EtherCloud portal, and actively monitor connectivity of the circuit, among other advantages.” 

So what is EtherCloud? Launched in early 2011, the innovative service is a Layer 2 platform connecting diverse partner networks into a seamless Ethernet cloud that delivers end-to-end connectivity around the world. EtherCloud relies on Tinet’s global MPLS backbone as a distributed switched network.  It is currently available at 120 Points of Presence (PoPs) in four continents, to interconnect partners’ networks through standardized E-NNIs. 

“We are pleased to be working with IP Networks, a robust, all-fiber partner in the high-tech region of the San Francisco Bay Area,” continues Paolo Gambini, Chief Marketing Officer of Tinet. “IP Networks’ diverse access to fiber facilities is unique; the company is able to utilize existing electric utility infrastructure and position itself as physically independent of other carrier access points.  Additionally EtherCloud offers IP Networks access to multiple new routes from other providers. In turn, this provides a benefit to Tinet by allowing us to offer our EtherCloud partners this redundant and diverse access.” 

Want to learn more about each company?  For Tinet, visit www.tinet.net, and for IP Networks, visit www.ipnetworksinc.com.

Hunter Newby, CEO of Allied Fiber, will participate as a speaker at the upcoming COMPTEL PLUS Fall 2011 Convention & EXPO, October 2-5, 2011, at the Gaylord Palms Hotel and Convention Center in Orlando. Hunter is speaking on a panel as well as at the Light Reading Backhaul Strategies for Competitive Carriers summit. Hunter will speak on Monday, October 3 at 1:30 pm on the panel entitled “Fiber: A Sector Involves” and also on Tuesday, October 4 at 12:05 pm for Light Reading’s “Backhaul Challenges with LTE” discussion.

COMPTEL PLUS Convention & EXPO is a networking event for innovative communications companies and their supplier partners. Light Reading’s Backhaul summit, colocated at the COMPTEL PLUS convention, will serve as a guide for the myriad of choices and decisions backhaul providers must make when planning to serve the 3G and 4G wireless network operators. Allied Fiber looks forward to participating on both panels, as they cover topics of high importance to Allied Fiber, fiber and wireless backhaul.

To schedule a meeting with Allied Fiber while at the conference, email jsa_allied@jaymiescotto.com. For more information on Allied Fiber, please visit www.alliedfiber.com.

Contact Telecom LLC, announces the winner of its drawing held at the recent National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA) Finance & Accounting Conference in Chicago. Always a hot item at events and tradeshows, the iPad 2 was awarded to M. O’Neal Miller, Chief Executive Financial Operations for Horry Telephone Cooperative, Inc. (HTC). As an exclusive sponsor of the event, Contact Telecom showcased its Billing Data Analyzer (BDA), a scalable, Software-as-a-Service based business assurance platform.

Designed to automate, manage, and process billing and invoice data, BDA has proven to be a crucial time- and money-saving tool for carriers and telecommunication service providers.

Contact Telecom’s suite of services includes Reader+, which quickly integrates carrier invoices across an easy to use web interface; Cost Assurance, a tool that allows carriers to proactively uncover incorrect charges and recoup expenses; and Margin Assurance, which helps determine profitability.

“Financial and operations executives such as Mr. O’Neal Miller are approaching Contact Telecom every day, to learn about new solutions for business assurance,” comments James Buttafuoco, Managing Partner for Contact Telecom. “It’s critical for companies to arm themselves with proper tools so that revenue and cost assurance analysis can be conducted quickly and accurately, further ensuring profitability.”

For more information about Contact Telecom and how to automate data processing, please visit www.ContactTelecom.com.

Zayo announces today the completion of its network upgrade for the Marietta City Schools (MCS). MCS is a public K-12 school district in Marietta, Georgia serving over 8,000 students with approximately 1,200 employees. The network upgrade provides Marietta City Schools with a high-speed, wide-area, fiber network linking its central administrative office to each remote location with high bandwidth capacity.

Zayo’s cost-effective network upgrade plan based on its long-term partnership and expertise with MCS, will satisfy the district’s growing need for bandwidth. Zayo was also able to ensure security and reliability, as it is one of the few providers in the area that owns its fiber assets and has existing, direct connections to each of the schools. Additionally, Zayo was able to implement an E-Rate compliant fiber network, which will increase capacity by ten times at each site to a full Gigabit.

As a national provider of fiber-based bandwidth infrastructure and network-neutral colocation and interconnection services, Zayo serves wireline and wireless carriers, data centers, internet content and services companies, high bandwidth enterprises as well as federal, state and local government agencies.

For more information about Zayo, visit www.zayo.com.

Telephone landline service has been the historical norm for home and business communications, and despite the surge in mobile communications technology, it remains a large player in communication services. Prices can vary between providers of landline services, or within plans offered by a single provider, and here are some of the reasons for that variation.

1. Location. Your landline pricing will vary based on where you live or locate your business. One survey of pricing found a variance of average local service pricing among major cities, ranging from $27.01 in Seattle, WA, to $39.22 in Minneapolis, MN.
2. Location-II. If you live in a rural area, landline prices are going to be higher than they are in more densely populated areas, unless your state regulates providers and does not allow such differences.
3. Who Owns the Lines? Landline service pricing can vary based on whether a local company owns the lines that transmit calls, or leases them from another company. It’s not always consistent, though. Either one can be cheaper or more expensive, based on line-lease costs, line maintenance costs, and cost of lease rights for land crossed by the wires.
4. Signal Strength and Speed. Local landline service companies will often vary in price based on their capacity for transmitting data at higher speeds, or in for transmitting larger quantities of data at a time, as in fax transmissions.
5. Per Call vs. Per Month. Some landline service providers will set pricing based on how many calls are made, or how long calls last, while others set prices for a time period without regard for quantity or length of calls.
6. Emergencies Only. There are a number of communities in which service providers offer extremely inexpensive plans that only allow incoming calls and calls to 911 operators, making them available for emergencies and nothing else.
7. Voice Messaging, or Not? Some landline plans come with the price of voice messaging services automatically added in, whether you want them or not.
8. Local or Local Plus? Landline service pricing may also vary based on whether you have local service only, or local service plus some long distance service. Prices may vary within these service plans, based on how large a network of long distance service is included in the billing, and whether call quantity or length can bring added charges.
9. Bundling Encouraged. Basic landline service is priced high by some providers, in order to encourage you to consider bundling phone service with internet and other types of services. You may find that it costs so little to add more services that it simply makes sense to do so. Whether you bundle or not, the company wins.
10. Because They Can. In some cases, the availability of competitive services is low, or the population base of a service area is unaware of competitive services or resistant to making changes. In these situations, the dominant company is simply able to operate with higher profit margins than would otherwise be the case.

So now you know some of the reasons that landline service prices are variable. In landline telephone service, as in any other business dealings, the rule of thumb is that the buyer needs to arm herself or himself with as much information as possible, in order to get the desired services at acceptable prices.

As September comes to a close, the telecom industry is busily gearing up for COMPTEL PLUS Fall 2011 Convention & EXPO, which takes place October 2-5, 2011, at the Gaylord Palms Hotel and Convention Center in Orlando. Sidera Networks, the premier provider of fiber optic-based network solutions, made the announcement today that its Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Lorin Dorco, will participate at the conference on the panel, “Managing Network Growth: Meeting Demands and Expectations.”  

Lorin Dorco, Chief Technology Officer for Sidera Networks

The panel will focus on how to lower the cost of infrastructure investments and generate new revenue – an area in which Dorco is most primed to speak as the one responsible for Sidera’s strategic technology plan, and supporting the development of next generation products and services . Specifically, Dorco will present on how, through strategic planning and provisioning, enterprises can benefit from a customized network infrastructure.  

The session is scheduled for October 4, 2011 at 11:00 a.m. EST in the Osceola Ballroom B.  

“I am thrilled to be participating in one of the industry’s largest conferences, where I can share Sidera’s ‘outside the box’ approach to networking, which has proven to enhance our client’s business performance,” states Dorco. “COMPTEL PLUS provides an effective forum that creates opportunities for the industry to share best practices.  We’re looking forward to sharing our ideas and learning from our peers.”

Sidera will also be exhibiting at COMPTEL PLUS in Booth 407. To meet with Sidera at COMPTEL PLUS contact us at www.sidera.net/news/events/meeting-request.

For more information about the COMPTEL PLUS Fall 2011 Convention & EXPO or to register for the full show, visit www.comptelplus.org.

Global Capacity is crossing the pond to discuss the challenges and solutions to one of the biggest obstacles surrounding global service delivery, Local Access. As one of the U.S.’s preeminent facilitators of access network procurement, provisioning and exchange, they know a little something about that.

Putting the “Global” in Global Capacity, the company’s CEO, Patrick Shutt, is taking Global Capacity’s practical experience and access network know-how to London for the Global Carrier Community Meeting (GCCM). More specifically,  Patrick will give a keynote presentation and speak to the challenges of local access network delivery during a panel discussion entitled, Local Access – How to overcome the biggest challenge of global service delivery?

The Global Carrier Community was founded in September 2007 with the purpose of creating a central networking platform enabling and facilitating business opportunities between Telecommunications Service Providers within voice, data and telehouse segments. Since its inception, it has given accreditation to 1500+ members from 750+ Telecom Operators in 110+ countries worldwide.

With over two decades of management experience in the information services and telecommunications industry, Patrick is uniquely qualified to provide insight into the challenges faced by global integration companies and international and global carriers as they look to streamline and automate their local access network management processes. His unique and comprehensive understanding of the issues associated with global local access, from provisioning, management and sourcing, to the lack of price transparency and global network fragmentation, guarantee an insightful and bottom-line centric session.

London is calling – Global Capacity will show them how to do it better!

To learn more about Global Capacity, go here: http://www.globalcapacity.com/

To learn more about the Global Carrier Community Meeting (GCCM), go here: http://www.carriercommunity.com/event-details.php?id=53

Maura Mahoney, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Sidera Networks sums it up nicely in a recent article for Corp! Magazine – Low Latency is no longer solely imperative to the financial services industry, it is an area of focus for companies across a variety of industries. With the increase of cloud adoption and bandwidth-intensive applications, businesses are utilizing innovative operations that require more efficient network connectivity. Just as minimizing delays in transactions and increasing data speed are critical to success, performance delays can lead to costly outcomes.

_Low latency networks’ real time connectivity is ideal for businesses operating in today’s deadline-driven society. The connectivity facilitates more efficient collaboration between employees, customers, staff, students, and enterprises, saving time and money. For example, low-latency networks are a critical component to providing superior quality care in the healthcare industry. Real time connectivity allows for faster assessments, diagnoses, and collaboration between doctors and nurses.

Speed has become a network must have across industries. Low latency requirements and networks should be tailored to individual clients’ needs. To ensure that your network is suited to support your business’ needs consider the following:

Application performance on high-speed networks can be enhanced by combining low latency and high capacity.

1. High-speed networks act as the ideal platform for applications, such as video-conferencing, rich content, live-streaming media, and access to real-time information.
2. Improve the reliability and accessibility of your cloud-based Web applications via a low latency network.
3. The real-time connectivity provided by a low latency network is ideal for deadline-driven environments.
4. Low latency networks allow for more efficient collaboration, saving time and money.

To read the full release, please click here. For more information on Sidera Networks visit www.sidera.net.

_Sidera Networks, the premier provider of fiber optic-based network solutions, announced that Flexenet has selected its Xtreme ultra-low latency network. Flexenet, Europe’s leader in mission-critical voice trading technology and connectivity solutions for major banks and brokers, joins a list of nearly 250 financial institutions and 30 of the world’s leading financial exchanges on Sidera Networks’ network footprint.

Flexenet is provided with seamless connectivity for high quality, automated trading through Sidera Networks’ Xtreme ultra-low latency network. “When we entered the U.S. market, it was clear that Sidera Networks was the best choice, providing us with direct connectivity and guaranteed latency, and allowing us to deliver the first-class service our customers expect from us” stated Chris Rose, CEO of Flexenet. Sidera Networks is also able to provide direct access to key New York-based financial exchanges and rapidly provision circuits to Flexenet’s Manhattan facility.

For more information email jsa_sidera@jaymiescotto.com or visit www.sidera.net.