Level 3: Taking the edge to the enterprise

CEN Feature (Sep 16 2010)

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   Originally a “carriers’ carrier,” Level 3 is Number 9 on Vertical Systems Group’s current leaderboard of companies with the most Carrier Ethernet retail port installations. But don’t let the ranking fool you. Level 3 has deployed a whole lot of Ethernet since 2000.

    

   “Our port distribution across speeds varies greatly from our competitors,” said Russell Shriver, vice president of product management Internet and data services for Level 3. “We serve a lot of wholseale businesses with 10 Gbps high-speed IP ports. Many carriers still don’t have 10 Gbps high-speed ports in their networks, but we sell them by the truckload.”

    

   But wholesale customers are not the only customers on Level 3’s radar. Enterprise customers have been an ever-increasing priority since the company launched switched VPLS on its nationwide network in 2005, said Shriver. And for the past two years, the carrier has been executing a strategy designed to get the right sets of requirements and solutions in place to better serve its target enterprise customers.

    

   “We have updated all of our edge equipment to the latest technologies available,” he said.

    

   In the last three to six months the carrier has more than tripled the number of markets with the new edge gear. In addition to broadening its own network footprint, the new equipment adds incremental new features such as Queue in Queue, VLAN Stacking and VLAN Transparency. Last but not least, it shortens Level 3’s network access circuits, which in turn improves the carrier’s cost position, he explained.

    

   Taking things up another notch, Level 3 is also implementing ENNI’s to take advantage of the economies of scale the new standard provides. The goal is to interface with the Local Exchange Carrier in every market at minimum, and, ideally, interconnect with one or two other providers that have native Ethernet circuits in the last mile, Shriver explained. 

    

   “We are six months into that two year program and we already have a significant number of ENNI’s in operation,” he said.

    

   Both efforts are helping to ensure that Level 3 has parity with other competitors or is leading the market depending on the competitor or feature, he adds. “We are more cost-effective in a lot more places than many of our competitors because of the investments we’ve made.”

    

   On the personal side of the business, Level 3 is trying to help enterprise customers navigate what can be a confusing Carrier Ethernet landscape. When they are trying to decide what to buy, customers are dealing with a lot of different names for a lot of different access methods from multiple carriers, said Shriver. Level 3 breaks it down for customers by first asking them if they want a switched or dedicated access circuit and then offers them a combination of on-net or off-net flavors of both, he added. Customers then choose between several price points and SLAs.

    

   “That really drives the decision as to what is the best technology, service or access method to use,” he explains.

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