The trials will run from January to March 2008 on eleven exchanges in the West Midlands from the first two available BT Aggregation Points (APs) in Birmingham and Wolverhampton (ultimately there will be 20 APs). However, unlike BT’s Wholesale Broadband Managed Connect (WBMC) trial, partners trialing Entanet’s service will be able to connect at various locations rather than being restricted to the Birmingham AP.
Known currently as EWCS Broadband (Entanet Wholesale Carrier Services – Broadband), the managed wholesale service enables Entanet’s partners to deliver the features and benefits of ADSL2+ to their customers without having to directly connect to the WBC Aggregation Points – an approach that would require significant investment.
Commenting on the invitation to partners, Entanet Broadband Business Development Manager Carol Davies says: “Through the WBC Broadband service trials that started in Birmingham in November we’re gaining excellent insight into the product’s performance. This further trial is an important opportunity for partners to see the service in action themselves. We expect ADSL2+ associated speeds and QoS options to be available during the trial and later the emergence of Annex M options which will allow the trading off of downstream rates in favour of higher upstream rates.”
EWCS Broadband will be a particularly attractive proposition to ISPs that are currently taking IPStream Centrals up to around 155Mbps from BT Wholesale. “It’s unlikely that BTW will make a managed WBC product appropriate for smaller providers in the medium term and the high costs associated with taking WBC will be a barrier for them” says Davies. “BT Wholesale aims to introduce IPStream Connect sometime later in 2008, although this product will not deliver the ADSL2+ features increasingly demanded by end users, especially business customers.” Entanet’s managed EWCS Broadband service will allow partners to flexibly take connectivity from 1-2Mbps right up to 1Gbps by using a copper or fibre based ‘Broadband Private Network Interconnection’.
Under 21CN, Entanet will collect traffic from all of the 20 WBC APs. It will transport the traffic over a shared MPLS network to any of the other APs or alternatively to any one of seventeen of its existing POPs/datacentres. Other locations will be reachable using different Entanet Metro Ethernet services. “ISPs taking WBMC direct from BT Wholesale will only be able to do so from the twenty APs” adds Davies. “Our approach gives them much greater flexibility and control over their connections.”