Equant to offer DSL

Equant will launch DSL later this month providing another option for its end-to-end IP VPN solution, Equant officials said today.

Senior Vice President of Data and IP Products Gopi Gopinath said Equant would deploy DSL initially in 8 countries including the U.S. by the end of February as a compliment to its IP VPN and LAN access solutions. Equant, however, is not getting into the DSL carrier business. Instead, the carrier is trying to bring remote sites with smaller capacity needs into its customers’ networks, Gopinath said.

“This is all part of a larger offering,” Gopinath said. “Our current customers have asked for DSL services, and we feel like there are sectors we’re missing such as retail that have a lot of small branches with low capacity needs.”

Though Equant did not specify, which DSL technology it would use, it said it would offer connection speeds up to 1.5 Mb/s. After its initial rollout, Equant plans to add service to other countries on its global network. The service is already in trial with four customers with offices in 300 locations -- one such customer being a car manufacturer in the U.K. that uses the DSL service to connect its dealerships into the corporate IP VPN.