Verizon Wholesale Team Revolutionizes Circuit Provisioning Speeds With ’Bandwidth on Demand’ Service

Use of Control Plane Technology Slashes Circuit Provisioning Times

NEW YORK - Verizon is introducing a new high-bandwidth service that dramatically cuts the time it takes to provide more data capacity for wholesale customers. The service, Bandwidth on Demand, uses some of the most advanced telecom technology currently available.

Bandwidth on Demand is being launched today in the New York City metropolitan region, where Verizon has tested the service in a year-long technical trial. The service will be expanded to additional cities over the next several years.

Offered through Verizon Partner Solutions, the business unit that serves U.S.-based wholesale customers, the new Bandwidth on Demand service can reduce the time it takes to establish DS-3 high-capacity circuits as well as SONET and Ethernet circuits from weeks to hours and, in some cases, minutes. With Bandwidth on Demand, wholesale customers can quickly order and establish additional capacity to meet dynamic end-users’ bandwidth needs.

In addition, Verizon has modified traditional ordering-and-billing processes to accommodate the flexibility of Bandwidth on Demand.

Once Verizon wholesale customers establish the initial circuit with the Bandwidth on Demand capability, they will be able to order and be billed for bandwidth that remains entirely on the Bandwidth on Demand network when they require it for as short a period as one day. Previously, customers had to purchase a dedicated, private-line facility over a longer period of time.

“One of our top priorities is finding ways to continually improve how we serve our customers,” said Verizon Partner Solutions Vice President Quintin Lew. “This once again demonstrates that Verizon is able to create tailored and innovative solutions to our customers’ evolving needs.”

Bill Uliasz, Verizon technology director for access and transport architecture, said, “Verizon has been leading the industry in driving optical control plane standards and vendor interoperability. Our new service sets an industry milestone in delivering advanced broadband services.”

Optical control plane technology allows electronic devices within optical networks to easily communicate with each other in much the same way SS-7 signaling allows switches to communicate with each other in traditional voice telephone networks. This additional level of intelligence in the network itself simplifies operations and is more efficient, allowing for near real-time provisioning of specified new circuits.

A request for a new circuit can be forwarded to a single control-plane-enabled network element, eliminating the need to perform a number of manual steps at multiple locations, as previously required. Instead, the request is routed to the appropriate end points of the proposed circuit, and intermediate control-plane network elements are queried for available bandwidth to establish the end-to-end circuit. Once the circuit path is successfully determined, cross-connects are automatically established in each network element, equipment options are provisioned, and service is generally established within a matter of hours, if not minutes.

Previously, this process could take several weeks and, in some cases, months to accomplish. After the new circuit is established on the Bandwidth on Demand network, it functions just as any true private line service would today.

Currently, all on-network Bandwidth on Demand circuits will be provisioned with two diverse paths through the network, providing the same level of reliability and redundancy associated with the more traditional SONET networks. In the near future, Verizon Partner Solutions also plans to offer what is known as a dynamic reroute option. With this option, single-path designs would be used through the network, with the ability to automatically and dynamically reroute data and voice traffic around a problem in the circuit’s path.

Other features available by using control plane technology include:

* The ability to make timely bandwidth adjustments to an existing circuit to meet quickly evolving needs.

* Split-second rerouting of traffic around unexpected network problems.

* Greater customer capability to optimize network utilization.