Welcome to the September 2009 issue of EtherNEWS, offered in video and Podcast versions. Each month’s edition covers a wide range of applications and solutions related to Ethernet service creation, service assurance, SLA & QoS monitoring and evolving industry standards.
This month we feature a case study of Fibertech Networks, an Accedian Networks customer in the U.S. northeast delivering Ethernet wireless backhaul, wholesale and business services over an all-fiber infrastructure. This case study explores how Fibertech adapted their existing network to meet the performance demands of 3G & 4G wireless backhaul, while maintaining a business case based on service diversity.
This case study is available in three formats: a full-length, chapter-based video (~20 minutes), a video Podcast, and a roundtable discussion format (transcript below).
Your Thoughts?
Share your experiences with your industry colleagues by answering the two polls below, then let us know your thoughts by commenting on this article – you can add your comments at the bottom.
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| MH | We started FiberTech in 2000. We set out to build alternative fiber infrastructure in the northeast and midwest. We went from there to providing transport to both enterprise and carrier customers – across all of the 23 markets we serve today. |
| FC | We are an all fiber Network. So, every one of our customers are connected by fiber. We do last mile to every single customer. We targeted 2nd tier markets where we thought was not very much in the way of fiber. In 2005, we moved from dark fiber to direct [lit] services in order to get deeper into the current markets and maximize our investment in current markets. The networks themselves are metropolitan networks – networks that we design, build and manage. We own and control those networks. Today we’ve approached 5000 route miles of fiber, and we built every mile of it. |
| JP | We have a variety of markets out there ranging from cities as big as Pittsburgh to smaller ones like Springfield, Massachusetts. We serve all of those the same way. Fiber is densely built into each of the downtowns and then out into the suburbs in such a way that we have an on-net solution for almost every major business firm or organization in each of those communities. |
| FC |
We’ve got all the major carriers [as customers] today. We also have a Triple-A list of large enterprise customers, and the engine for all that has been bandwidth, the explosion for bandwidth, whether wireless or wireline. |
| JP | The basic drivers of our business are fairly simple, and that is bigger broadband pipes to the back of the desktop. Businesses, hospitals, colleges, universities that’s what they need and once they get it, nobody really goes back. Nobody wants slower speed or less bandwidth. They want more. |
| EI | One of the unique things we can do for our customers by owing fiber end-to-end is [provide] flexibility. Customers can start out with a small amount of bandwidth and we can easily grow that as they need it. Most of the time, it doesn’t require even a service call to a technician, we do it right here from the NOC (Network Operations Center), you can actually program it while the customer is on the phone. Our services range from 3 Meg all the way up to 10 Gig. We also offer DWDM, which is multiple wavelengths or multiple 10 Gig [connections] over the same fiber. |
| MH | What we do well as a company is extend fiber to undeserved areas and then become the alternative provider. If you extend that beyond metropolitan networks, it’s a natural extension to provide fiber backhaul transport to wireless providers, whether it’s dark fiber or lit services, we do both. |
| TP | We’re not struggling with either legacy copper gear or COs that are already in place. We have end-to-end fiber, we support it all, we maintain it all, we monitor it all. It puts us in control. When the wireless carriers came looking for backhaul providers we weren’t starting from scratch, we built it around what we already had. |
| EI | Key to 3G rollouts is bringing Ethernet to the cell site. Fibertech is right in the game when it comes to 3G backhaul. We are providing traditional TDM services – T1s to cell towers – as well as next generation Ethernet. We have also worked with some carriers on the 4G rollout. Again, it’s more of an Ethernet play. |
| MH | Most of our competitors build a business model that says that once they build to the cell tower then they’ve got to sell to everybody else on that cell tower – which means they’ve got to sell to all [their customers’] competitors to make a business case out of it. We’re not that way. We build our business case knowing that we’ll sell to other people along the path that have nothing to do with the cellular industry. So if the wheels start coming off the cellular industry we’re going to survive that. We don’t have to turn around and then make deals with all of their competitors in order to make the business model work. |
| MH | As the wireless providers migrate to 3G and 4G they are going to need an infrastructure that can support that and allow them to cost effectively scale. I don’t think you can bond enough T1s over copper to support that. The migration to Ethernet is going to continue at a more and more rapid pace in order to [provide scalable bandwidth that enables them to] compete for end users. |
| TP | We engineer the network to go well above 100 Mbps per site. We’re already seeing [the rapid consumption of bandwidth] today in video, voice – and it is going to be VoIP as opposed to TDM. |
| MH | Wireless networks have to be rock solid, each tower has to be up all the time. Particularly when there is an event going on, people turn to their wireless phones and need those to be working. So, the tolerances and the SLAs and the reliability that we provide to large institutions, healthcare, banks, is very similar to what we provide to wireless providers. |
| TP | To deliver [3G backhaul] over Ethernet and meet [the wireless operators’] requirements is an achievement in itself. To be able to support to 2G at the same time, so T1s, makes it extremely difficult because a lot of times people want to go with a less expensive Ethernet deployment and transport system, but the reliability still needs to be there. [Wireless operators] are really putting carriers in a tough spot asking for both. |
| JP | We have 2000 sales contracts in place in place that serve 600 customers. So, obviously we’ve got multiple deals with many of our customers. In some cases, we have as many as 20 different, follow-on contracts after the first one. It’s all because we pay a lot of attention to reliability and dependability of service itself. We have the latest in both test equipment and gear, and we’ve invested in a network operations center that we think is as good as anything in the industry in terms of 7 x 24, with continuous coverage and monitoring. |
| TP | [The mobile operators’ requirements] don’t only address scalability and reliability. They want low latency, very high availability circuits and not only are they asking for that dependability, they want it proven. |
| EI | One of the things that we’ve done in our deployment to the wireless carriers is actually put it out what is called an Ethernet NID to each cell site. It’s a device that allows us to monitor real time latency and jitter and lost packets. From the NOC here we are able to poll those devices on a real time basis and provide that information back to the customer. That’s an important part of our SLA to our wireless carriers. |
| TP | Not only do NIDs provide reportability, but you can actually test throughput while the customer is using his circuit and not affect him. That’s an awesome feature. We can turn around to show the customer, and say “that’s how I know you were getting your throughput.”
A lot of time I walk in to a meeting competing against a local incumbent, and they give a price for a circuit but never show them any details on the engineering. We have visibility from end-to-end, and we disclose that with the customer. We have thresholds for high latency, low latency. We have alarms set up for loss of signal. We have thresholds for low usage, high usage. So whenever the circuit is acting in an abnormal manner we can dive in utilizing network statistics and tools to be able to not only find out what’s going on at that point in time, but also pair it up to what we had originally turned it up to see if something changed. |
| TP | With the scalability of Ethernet, the services, the text messages, the Internet browsing can explode. It can follow the same trend as residential, where at one point we were on dial up 56K, and now people are offering 10 Mbps as a standard offering. |
| MH | The demands on the cell tower are going to become far greater very fast, and we view the tower as the central office in the future. That’s where the connectivity is going to come and go from, much more so than the traditional brick and mortar CO we know from the past. |
| TP | What amazes me is the whole video phenomenon. Today they offer one [or two] channels. They don’t offer one channel because they want to offer one channel. They offer one channel because they are bandwidth constrained. When they are able to offer 10 channels, that’s 10 more reasons [for a consumer to go with] that provider instead of their competitors. |
| MH | What the bandwidth is required in the future is anybody’s guess. But by having a fiber infrastructure going to that cell tower takes a lot of those worries away. |
| TP | Fibertech’s network puts the cell companies at ease – they will have fiber all the way from their MSC (Mobile Switching Center) to their cell sites. The more competition the better: they’ll have fiber infrastructure that allows them to price-leverage their services. The future-proofing is in the fiber, bandwidth demands may change but fiber keeps pace and will be there forever. |
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Accedian Networks will be co-presenting with Nakina Systems on the topic: Driving Profitability in Business Ethernet Services. The session focuses on efficiently deploying SLA-grade Ethernet services, enabling tailored service offerings, and building a best-in-class Ethernet service delivery infrastructure that scales to nationwide offerings. More Info.
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