Buildings get smart

Service providers, vendors show renewed interest in CPE market Though billed as a look into the future of networks, last week's Next Generation Networks conference easily could have been entitled"Next Generation Buildings."

Increasingly, vendors and carriers are no longer treating the last few feet of buildings as maintenance nightmares that should be outsourced. Instead, many see opportunity to offer advanced services by treating buildings and campuses as unique networks.

Endemic of the new attitude is Kenetec. The Naugatuck, Conn.-based company this week will unveil what it claims is the first group of broadband products specifically geared to the multi-tenant market. Designed to serve small businesses, the Kenetec EdgeXpress line fits into the company's services-oriented building area network (SBAN) architecture, which lets service providers quickly deploy new services while lowering operational costs.

Key to the new architecture is the ability to combine all services on a single network."It's not just a connectivity solution," said Nathan Kalowski, vice president of marketing for Kenetec."You've got to deal with all the different traffic types. At the same time, parallel networks are just too tough to manage."

Under the SBAN scheme, service providers deploy a service access unit inside buildings to provide circuit-switched or packetized voice, as well as data access up to 100 Mb/s (see figure). For the point of presence, the company developed the 5000 Series Exchange Platform, which provides WAN access to intranet, Internet and telephony services.

All types of traffic are packetized within the building, which makes management easier, Kalowski said. In addition, converting all streams to packets lets the service provider identify packets by application and immediately apply quality-of-service (QOS) characteristics.

"If I can tag that traffic, I can identify it, and that's the key to providing QOS throughout the whole network," Kalowski said.

Kenetec, which also announced Gillette Global Network as a tester, is unveiling its products as service providers renew interest in owning and maintaining the equipment at the customer premises. Part of the attention is a result of competitive pressure.

"Everybody is putting out broadband services, and they're getting into it because they don't really have a choice," said George Conant, president and CEO of Merlot Communications, which is marketing its end-user equipment as a new revenue source for carriers."It's a little like an airline buying a jumbo jet. They have to fly it at 90% capacity until they turn a profit.We'd rather have the service provider selling our product to the end user."

However, while Merlot promotes the customer premises equipment (CPE) sale, it doesn't believe carriers - particularly newer providers - want to retain ownership because of the maintenance requirements.

"Most of these guys are happy to get out of the CPE market," Conant said. "And part of the problem for CLECs is some of them don't have trucks to roll."

Still, such concerns aren't stopping vendors from launching new product. Dynarc is pushing its product line further toward the customer with an access router designed for in-building use.

Based on the company's Channelized Reserved Services, Dynarc's 1124 is a 24-port router geared to metropolitan service providers. As with its previous products, the company is emphasizing the new router's ability to allocate bandwidth dynamically.

"We don't just throw huge amounts of bandwidth at the market," said Lloyd Green, senior director of marketing for Dynarc.

Dynarc views the metro market as a place to layer IP attributes on top of existing time division multiplexing-based networks, Green said."What we're trying to get away from is the rigidity of the circuit-switch environment."

HarvardNet's BusinessSpeed DSL service now is available in 23 towns in New Jersey, including Newark, New Providence, Englewood, Elizabeth, Montclair and West Orange. HarvardNet plans to serve 120 towns, reaching 250,000 business locations in New Jersey.

SoVerNet acquired National Mobile Communications, a Vermont CLEC. The acquisition, which includes the Green Mountain Telecom and Best Cellular brands, positions SoVerNet to expand its service offerings as an ICP.