AT&T chasing last-mile enterprise deals

AT&T today announced the launch of a major last-mile access service aimed at large enterprises and government, seeking to lure the lucrative access deals away from the local exchange carriers.

Called AT&T High Performance Access Service or HiPAS, the service offers OC-3 to OC-192 connections over metro fiber rings in 67 markets and direct links into AT&T’s core network. AT&T officials said it wants to provide end to service from customer premise to customer premise as part of CEO Dave Dorman’s new strategy of making AT&T into an end-to-end solutions provider for the world’s largest businesses.

The edge of the network is the most unreliable link in telecom today, and AT&T’s decision to push toward the customer presence was fueled by demand from its customers for more reliable connections, said AT&T vice president of sales Tom Noone.

“The last mile has always been an inhibitor… The weakest link in the chain,” Noone said. “Over 70% of problems in the network occur in that area.”

AT&T will offer dedicated private line, SONET ring, wavelength and Ethernet services over the new platform. While most of those services will be initially limited to 67 markets--and other markets where it has third party bandwidth agreements--AT&T plans to bring many of the services to its Integrated Global Enterprise Management Systems platform (IGEMS) to target multinational corporations. After its initial efforts to sell to large enterprises, AT&T plans to smaller capacity connections to its last-mile play, targeting medium-sized enterprises and business with DS-3 connections.