Jim Patterson, president of wholesale at Sprint, has a simple message for the members of COMPTEL: consider cable companies as alternative access providers.
“One of the things we are very excited about at Sprint — and are trying to raise interest amongst all of the COMPTEL group — is around cable companies and how they are starting to make moves into the access arena and Ethernet arena,” said Patterson.
To do that, Patterson has assembled a panel of cableco executives to explain their value proposition at a session today during the COMPTEL PLUS Convention & Expo.
Among the panelists are Jay Clark, carrier product manager of Cox Business, which is a longtime player in the wholesale carrier space, and John Pascarelli, COO of MediaCom Communications Corp., a relative newcomer. Ken Fitzpatrick, senior vice president of Time Warner Cable Business Class, and Nick Lenoci, vice president of business solutions for Bright House Networks — executives from two other wholesale-friendly cablecos — will round out the panel.
“What we’ve tried to assemble here is a mixture of tenured and new entrants into the market to see how they are approaching the market, what their value proposition is to carriers and to raise awareness of the alternatives,” Patterson said.
Patterson speaks from experience: 10 years buying from cablecos. Sprint currently works with each of these panelists’ companies, as well as others, to source cell site backhaul or Ethernet access into the carrier’s MPLS network.
“One of the things that excites us about working with the cable community is the density of fiber they have locally in their markets,” Patterson said. In addition, he said their buildout strategies go beyond the building-centric metro deployments common to most competitive access providers. That means they bring coverage not only to cities, but to suburbs and in some cases rural areas.
This is critical as bandwidth demand begins to sprawl. “We are starting to see a much higher amount of bandwidth growth in areas outside of the metro tall shiny buildings and in areas outside of carrier hotels, which is where a lot of people have fiber connected today,” Patterson said. “You are seeing that growth start to spread out. As that growth starts to spread out, the need for competitive carriers to have alternate sources of bandwidth continues to grow.”
While Sprint has been capitalizing on cable network alternatives for a decade, the strategy is new to many CLECs, but only because the demand has started to explode recently. “They need, and they need right away,” Patterson said.
The trick, he added, is matching up the ability of the cable companies’ network with the ever-increasing demand in the geographies where bandwidth alternatives have been scarce.
While cable companies vary in the degree they have embraced selling carrier services, Patterson said they are sufficiently motivated to do so since carriers tend to be a constant source of demand when other markets, such as businesses, ebb or become more competitive.
Time Warner Cable Business Class has been selling carrier services on a limited basis for two years, but lately it’s been a greater priority. “Over the past 12-14 months is when our strategy has really taken off with added interest from the carriers and a true standardized and centralized wholesale design architecture, including carrier-grade SLAs,” said Ken Fitzpatrick, senior vice president at TWC-BC. “This has become a very strategic part of our business. We see considerable long-term benefits in our carrier strategy.”
The cable company is offering lit fiber, mostly Ethernet, but its network supports TDM services and wavelengths. Besides Sprint, it has agreements with Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, tw telecom and 360 Networks. It also is finding opportunities in the mobile operator space and with the major transport providers.
Fitzpatrick said fiber availability and alternative entrance are the two primary benefits of using a cable company. “Certainly pricing advantages are there, but we see the true ‘killer application’ being our breadth and depth of network in our metros,” he said.
