Covad takes MPLS nationwide on fiber network

Covad Communications today announced a major network upgrade to OC-192 metro optical rings and deployment of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology nationwide, signaling its move into broader wholesale services.

“This is one of a series of announcements we will be making,” said Young-Sae Song, vice president of marketing for Covad's wholesale division. “Covad is moving beyond being an access company to provide a suite of network services to help our partners, anyone from smaller ISPs and larger carriers, with a broadband network platform that they can leverage to deliver revenue-generating value-added services.”

The goal is to enable its retail service provider customers to deliver IP-based value-added services across a broad footprint, with quality-of-service built for voice, video and other high-end offerings, Song said. Covad is one of a number of wholesale operators making wholesale offerings more robust.

“Our service provider partners will be able to go to market with a national offering with their own brand,” Song said. “A smaller partner might focus on a bigger region, and they can now compete with AT&T, Verizon and Qwest. A larger partner can use this network to fill out their footprint. By implementing MPLS in the core over a nationwide optical broadband network, we will enable them to differentiate the different service requirements of all the services our partners are selling.”

Covad has been quietly restructuring its business, Song said, leasing dark fiber or wavelengths to create a national optical backbone and go beyond its more traditional role of providing DSL or T-1 access links.

“We don’t own our own fiber, we have either leased dark fiber or lambdas within a fiber,” Song said. “But we deployed our own equipment – the service terminates into our own Covad-owned, Covad-managed equipment, at all the different [points of presence] and data centers all the way down to the [central office]. One of the reasons we went this way is that we’ve definitely seen a pull from our partners for the ability to offer value-added services – video, voice or data applications. They need that traffic treated differently, depending on what services they deliver.”

Initially, the new network will support voice and video with more capabilities to come, such as virtual private networks, Song said. He declined to name Covad’s technology suppliers.

Covad also will continue being an easy company with which to do business, Song added.