CLEC targets telecommuters: Single-switch infrastructure helps minimize dial-up charges

Focal Communications Corp., a competitive local exchange carrier, is targeting corporations that offer telecommuting with its Virtual Office service launched in Chicago last week. The service helps a company reduce its phone charges by ensuring that telecommuters are charged the lowest local rates when dialing into their office.

Corporations lease T-1 or primary rate ISDN connections from a remote access server or PBX to Focal's Northern Telecom DMS-500 switch, which serves the metropolitan area. Employees working from home, who may use the incumbent LEC, dial a telephone number assigned to a rate center close to their home. Although all calls are routed to Focal's switch, they are billed at a 5 cents flat fee, regardless of the call's duration, said Andy Robitshek, Focal's vice president of marketing and business analysis.

The company already offers a similar service for Internet service providers, enabling them to minimize customers' dial-up charges.

Focal is different from other CLECs for two key reasons, said Robitshek. It has not installed its own fiber, preferring to lease capacity from other carriers, and it is not using a bundled services approach.

"Ninety-nine percent of what we do is local phone service," said Robitshek. Instead of offering to be a single-source supplier, Focal targets only a portion of a company's local business, emphasizing the reliability of redundant connections.

Focal will begin offering service in New York soon and plans to turn up service in 10 cities within the next two years, said Robitshek.