Frontier is getting serious about the Carrier Ethernet wholesale opportunity, today announcing its first broadly available wholesale Carrier Ethernet service, which will be a best-effort Ethernet virtual private line (EVPL) offering dubbed EVPL Silver. In an interview, Frontier executive Lisa R. Partridge told Telecompetitor that Frontier plans to add a priority EVPL Gold offering during the second quarter of 2013, followed by a Platinum real-time offering during third quarter. The carrier also plans to add a wholesale multipoint Ethernet offering by the end of the year.
The target market for Frontier’s wholesale EVPL offering includes Internet service providers, competitive local exchange carriers and inter-exchange carriers wanting to provide Ethernet connectivity to business customers, said Partridge, who works in Frontier’s Carrier Product Management unit.
“They will establish an NNI [network-to-network interface] within our LATA,” explained Partridge. “We provide a building list and they can hub and spoke out to where the customer premises would be.”
Frontier will support wholesale EVPL services at rates up to 20 Mbps for copper-based connections and up to 1 Gbps for fiber-based connections.
The new wholesale EVPL offering will be available in 23 states within Frontier’s 27-state footprint. Frontier has offered Carrier Ethernet services on a retail basis for some time but wholesale Ethernet services previously were available only in areas that Frontier acquired from Verizon or on an individual basis or through a NECA 5 tariff.
Partridge also noted that Frontier previously offered a form of Ethernet in its fiber-to-the-cellsite offering, which is available on a wholesale basis to mobile network operators.
Asked how Frontier will differentiate its wholesale Carrier Ethernet offerings, Partridge noted that the company offers flat-rate pricing and that the company is looking into customer portals that will offer customers real-time reports on their services and which will be part of the Gold and Platinum offerings.
In addition Partridge said, “We engage in a very local model. . . Our technicians are local and easily accessible.”
