While carriers lament the rising costs of UNE-L and transport as a result of the recent court overturning of wholesale unbundling rules, a new service is coming to the market that promises to help CLECs that rely on such facilities to support their networks. UNE-R, or Unbundled Network Element Replacement, is not a Bell service but the invention of wholesaler Global Internetworking Inc.
Global Internetworking announced the new service today.
Global Internetworking’s UNE-R service provides CLECs a turnkey and lower cost alternative to buying DS1 and DS3 loops and dedicated transport through LEC special access tariffs. The service offers immediate access to hundreds of competitive access providers offering access to hundreds of thousands of physical locations (office buildings, points of presence, central offices, and end-offices) throughout the United States. In addition, within key markets in the Verizon service territory, GII’s UNE-R service provides significant discounts on special access tariff rates, even for locations currently only served by Verizon.The wholesaler claims it is able to do this by leveraging its purchasing relationships and proprietary network design and pricing software.
“We have systematically gone out to specific metro areas and began working with a variety of providers to create a comprehensive one-stop shop metro by metro,” says Andrew Goldsmith, Global Internetworking’s vice president of marketing and strategic planning. In Washington D.C., for example, he says there are about 800 commercial building that are only LEC served, but through UNE-R, Global Internetworking will be able to offer competitive access at below LEC tariff rates.
Goldsmith says UNE-R is more than just a repositioning of its core service, which enables carriers to quickly search a proprietary database of facilities of more than 1,300 carriers to piece together disparate networks through one point of contact.
“We have identified the metro areas and gone back to the CAPs and fiber providers that we have relationships with and found other buildings beyond their traditional lit base that they could light,” Goldsmith explains. “The benefit to the CLEC that is trying to get into such a building is that they would otherwise conclude the building is not on-net and they would have to buy special access.”
UNE-R, he says, is designed to eliminate the hassle of finding multiple alternative providers, making volume purchase commitments, negotiating multiple agreements and dealing with the provisioning groups of numerous other carriers.
Goldsmith says UNE-R now offers access to about 1,000 buildings in the D.C. area through arrangements with about eight of the 30 competitive providers it works with in the district. Philadelphia is expected to be available at the end of October and Boston and New York City by Dec. 1.
According to Goldsmith, within the Verizon service territory, the UNE-R service provides carriers with substantial additional discounts compared to the RBOC’s special access tariff rates.In addition, within key markets in the Verizon service territory, UNE-R service provides even greater discounts of 10 percent to 20 percent on special access tariff rates. In metro markets such as DC, Philadelphia, Boston and New York, UNE-R discounts may be as high as 50 percent, the company claims.
The need for Global Internetworking’s UNE-R service was created in the wake of rulings earlier this year from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the Federal Communications Commission changing regulations that had required regional Bell operating companies to provide UNEs, such as local enterprise market loops and dedicated transport, to competitive carriers at cost-based below-tariff rates. These UNE loops and dedicated transport services have been used by competitive carriers to connect their customers to their networks and the RBOC’s own network. As a result of the ruling, prices for such facilities from the RBOCs are expected to increase.
By aggregating demand, Global Internetworking also expects to stimulate demand for competitive facilities.
