Bridging the voice, data gap

Similar to the vendors that have optical migration paths woven into their portfolios or business plans, service providers are becoming increasingly concerned with their own road maps - from traditional voice and data services to next generation integrated services. Global NAP, a competitive local exchange carrier and carrier's carrier, will announce this week a $52 million multiyear deal with Convergent Networks for the vendor's integrated convergence switches.

"[Convergent] is like our Swiss army knife," said Frank Gangi, president of Global NAP. "It folds, it irons and it washes, and it does it today."

Global NAP wanted a way to support traditional services and a way to offer more advanced services while maintaining a competitive cost structure. "It offers [time division multiplexing] and ATM for us now, and in the future, IP," Gangi said.

"This lets them solve problems they have today and helps them build their revenue stream offerings for the future," said Sally Bament, vice president of marketing for Convergent. "It was really a lot more of an economic alternative for them."

2nd Century Communications was Convergent's first win, and now, with Global NAP, Convergent again appears to be leveraging the comfort-level that comes with the equipment's ATM base. Although vendors such as Sonus Networks and Salix have formidable products, they have proprietary backplanes; Convergent falls into service providers' comfort zones with ATM, said Christin Flynn, an analyst with The Yankee Group. But with the convergence switches, each has something a little different to meet the needs of various providers. "One may fit into a network far better than another," Flynn said.