Entanet opens 21CN broadband trials to channel

13th December 2007

Leading wholesale voice and data communications provider Entanet is inviting channel Partners to trial its managed version of Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) and gain first hand experience of delivering ADSL2+ services with additional options such as QoS to customers.

The trials will run from January to March 2008 on eleven exchanges in the West Midlands from the first two available BT Aggregation Points in Birmingham and Wolverhampton (ultimately there will be twenty APs). However, unlike BT’s 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 said: ”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. “BTW 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 twenty 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.”

Trial pricing

Entanet has also announced the trial pricing for its managed EWCS Broadband service as below.

Components	Rental (ex VAT)
Fixed charge per EU*	£0.00 per EU per month1
End User access	Band 1 exchanges £6.28 per month Band 2 exchanges £8.04 per month
Best efforts contracted bandwidth charge	£80-105.002 per Mbit/s per month
Excess bandwidth	£200.00 per Mbit/s per month
Real time	£175.00 per Mbit/s per month
Assured rate Aggregation Point bandwidth	£125.00 per Mbit/s per month
Assured EU charge	Band 1: £0.40 per month Band 2: £3.40 per month
Assured rate session bandwidth & duration charge	Set-up: 1.5p per session plus 0.006p per 100kb minute

1 This is included for comparison purposes
2 Based on committed bandwidth

Notably it is not applying a fixed charge per end user tail; its interconnect charges are small compared to BT Wholesale’s host link charges; and its charges for bandwidth are very competitive. “Significantly, we also provide a fully automated order process for all connections and a common interface with IPStream“ adds Davies. “This means Partners can take both IPStream and EWCS Broadband from us and they’ll be able move over all of their connections to the EWCS Broadband service as exchanges become 21C enabled.”

Partners wanting to register their interest in participating in the trials should contact Entanet directly on 0870 777 4224 or by emailing 21cn@entagroup.com

Notes:

QoS options
EWCS Broadband transports QoS markings transparently and will deliver all the in-contract packets that are passed into the network by the CP, supporting WBC QoS functionality. For QoS definitions, please see the WBC product outline.

Assured rate sessions
Assured rate sessions will be available via ADQ (Application Driven Quality of Service). These will provide a method to ensure that all packets contained within an end user session have the same guaranteed priority.

Real time QoS
Real time QoS will offer the capability to prioritise traffic so that applications such as voice or video conferencing receive a suitable quality of service.

Dedicated downstream QoS
The proposition will allow CPs to offer dedicated downstream bandwidths to their end users. It is expected that the end user target audience for this proposition will be SMEs and small corporate customers.