Out of the blue and into the fray: New Edge Networks up and running on the edge

New Edge Networks has gone from concept to competition in a little more than six months. The DSL provider with national aspirations has rolled out service to Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets in U S West's territory and is striving for more.

After receiving $15 million in funding last June from three top-tier venture capitalist groups, New Edge has set a blistering pace of inking interconnection and co-location agreements, installing DSL access multiplexers (DSLAMs) and multiservice switches, building its operations support system (OSS) and network operations center (NOC) and growing its staff. New Edge also has filed for competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) certification in all 50 states and has approval in 25.

The company has gone from five to more than 150 employees since beginning operations in June. It has installed DSLAMS in more than 50 central offices (COs) and has filed for co-location in more than 650 COs nationwide. New Edge also signed a reciprocal service agreement with NorthPoint Communications, under which the two providers will take orders in each other's markets where they don't have certification or coverage.

New Edge was the first data CLEC to use NightFire's SupplierExpress software to deliver DSL services in U S West's territory. "New Edge Networks was using SupplierExpress with U S West in less than 60 days," said Venkates Swaminathan, executive vice president and chief OSS strategist for NightFire.

Last week, New Edge awarded a $200 million contract to Newbridge Networks for network equipment and service management capabilities. New Edge already has installed Newbridge's MainStreetXpress 36170 multiservice switches throughout its network. The MainStreetXpress 46020 network manager is at the core of New Edge's centralized NOC, which already is running in Vancouver, Wash.

"We went with systems that are completely flexible," said Natalie Diggins, vice president of operations and co-founder of New Edge.

The flexibility comes from having ObjectSwitch as a middleware provider. "We went to ObjectSwitch for a lot of reasons. One is that they `got it,' in my opinion," Diggins said. "They could move and would move as fast as we were moving. They moved in New Edge time."

ObjectSwitch provided New Edge with the foundation on which to build its OSS, known as Pilot, or Primary Integrated Logical Office Tool.

"Part of the project plan was to build adapters to other vendors. We used the Infranet [application programming interface] from Portal [Software] and integrated it with ObjectSwitch software. New Edge was then able to create its Pilot system using a standard [Object Management Group] design," said Doug Ehrenreich, director of industry marketing at ObjectSwitch. New Edge Networks built its Pilot OSS within 60 days.

"Another reason we chose ObjectSwitch is we realized that we needed this type of architecture to keep up with every wonderful, new and innovative application coming down the line," Diggins said. "Object Switch will give us that kind of flexibility. The architecture is such that I can yank the billing system out by its roots and slap in another billing system."

New Edge Networks slapped in Portal's Infranet software to provide billing and customer care. That decision was based on Portal's proven ability to deliver service quickly, its Web-based focus and its support capabilities, Diggins said.

"A year from now someone else will be the greenfield player, and I want the same competitive advantage that somebody new to the market will have a year from now," Diggins said.

New Edge is in discussions for a second round of financing that would provide the capital to complete its two-year planned rollout in the U.S.