On the edge Cincinnati Bell ATM Services

Who are the leading edge providers of asynchronous transfer mode-based services today? You probably wouldn't think to consider a relatively small local telephony company with a long history of offering basic voice telephone services.

Think again. Cincinnati Bell Telephone has come a long way since it first started investigating the potential of ATM technology two years ago.

Recognizing the growing importance of data service to the company's customer base, as well as its long-term significance to the company itself, CBT put together a three-member team to figure out what it would take to enter the data services market.

Of course, there were a few minor problems to sort out before getting started. Namely, the budget was limited, the sales force was more accustomed to voice than to data services, the operations group was only equipped to support voice services and the management staff wanted a service and support infrastructure up and running in less than a year.

Despite these various challenges, within eight months the team had developed a full-fledged, applications-oriented, high-speed data service based on a state-of-the-art ATM network. Plus, CBT was starting to see a return on its investment.

Launching Into Data Because customers had been requesting service options at speeds between 1.5 and 45 Mb/s, the team started by looking at technologies that offer solutions in this range. To do this, team members evaluated a variety of network platform alternatives, including traditional time division multiplexing, fiber distributed data interface and ATM.

CBT needed a solution that offered scalability, flexibility, rapid provisioning and real-time monitoring-all for an economical price. "The first thing we did was concentrate on building a high-performance modular network that would form the foundation for our value-added data services," says Clyde Kober, director of the Network Knowledge Center at CBT.

The network had to be modular and highly flexible so that the initial investment could be kept at a minimum and the platform could be built out incrementally to meet customer demand.

While ATM met these various requirements, the team had entered the process believing that it would be too expensive. However, prices were dropping rapidly, offering some the hope that an economical offering could be developed to fit CBT's needs.

"We thought of it in terms of needing 'just-in-time' equipment provisioning, so that we didn't have to overextend our investment early in the product's life cycle," Kober says.

After careful evaluation of the options, the ATM network architecture won hands down, with the team deciding that two ATM switches would make up the high-speed switching backbone of the network. What made the whole plan work, however, turned out to be a multiple-application ATM edge vehicle from NetEdge Systems. The NetEdge ATM Connect platform allowed CBT to launch an aggressively priced, transparent, local area network interconnection service called LAN Advantage.

The platform allows the creation of closed user groups with a secure bridging feature that permits logical-level partitioning of a shared public network. This means that customers can gain the price advantages of a shared service while keeping the security of a private backbone.

A LAN Advantage subscriber that wants to connect two sites at 10 Mb/s speed would pay approximately $1820-$900 for an Ethernet connection to ATM at each site and a $20 permanent virtual circuit (PVC) charge. By comparison, a point-to-point DS-1 (1.544 Mb/s) circuit would cost about $450 but would offer less than 16% of the bandwidth provided by LAN Advantage. Here, a CSU/DSU would also be needed on both ends of the connection.

A DS-3 (44.736 Mb/s) connection would cost about $4000, in addition to the cost of two CSU/DSUs. The cost savings are multiplied further when you compare the alternatives for connecting even more sites because LAN Advantage connects sites through logical PVCs instead of requiring dedicated DS-1 or DS-3 lines for every possible communication route.

To fulfill other CBT mandates, the network is centrally managed and monitored using Hewlett-Packard's OpenView management system, which gives CBT real-time network usage information in addition to alarms. The usage information helps CBT engineer its backbone network as the number of customers increases. CBT also assists customers with capacity planning by providing information on the usage level of their virtual network.

The network can be managed remotely down to the component level, reducing operating costs because fewer field technicians are needed. It also reduces the time it takes to identify, isolate and resolve problems.

Hitting the Market Once the plan was set, the LAN Advantage network was installed and alpha tested in only two months. Beta tests began with three customers in September 1994, and a service tariff was filed. The beta tests were so successful that by the end of the month, the service was made available commercially. Local businesses were quick to recognize the possibilities of this high-speed service. For example, several local hospitals created a consortium to connect their primary care facilities to the network at Ethernet speeds. This allowed them to share patient information quickly and cost-effectively.

In addition, outlying facilities could connect to the hospitals' backbone network through a frame relay connection using frame relay-to-ATM service interworking. CBT is one of only a handful of carriers currently supporting frame relay-to-ATM service interworking.

With the service interworking feature, doctors can now use the new network to gain access to customer records no matter where they're located, and patients can be transferred between facilities and still have all of their medical records electronically available at the new location. A few LAN Advantage customers are even expanding their closed user groups to include other companies they work with regularly.

So far CBT considers its data service a success: The service already boasts 22 customers, and CBT is forecasting more than 100% growth for the next year.

Experience for the Future Launching LAN Advantage has provided CBT with invaluable data networking and service marketing experience. For example, it led to the creation of a whole new department. By the time the service was launched, the initial three-person team had grown to 13 members. Since most of the CBT support infrastructure is geared toward voice, CBT internally recruited five operational people from the voice group who had some data experience and then put them through training to get them started.

Two dedicated salespeople were selected to learn how to sell a value-added data service and generate early market momentum. Two customer service representatives, two design engineers, a marketing person and a general manager rounded out the team.

The small but highly specialized team became the seed from which CBT's Network Knowledge Center would grow. Using the expertise of the assembled team, the Network Knowledge Center is responsible for all phases of the LAN Advantage product, from product development and sales to installation and maintenance.

On the technical side, the infrastructure for launching additional services is now in place, making it fast and relatively inexpensive to add additional services to the mix. CBT is not just learning about how to support data services, it's also learning about customer data applications. By focusing on business applications, CBT can now offer solutions that go above and beyond the mere transport of data. By providing a comprehensive, end-to-end solution, the carrier is locking in a loyal customer base and making it difficult for any competitors to displace it in the future.

The Next Step Because data technology changes so rapidly, the team looked for a platform that would help CBT stay on the leading edge and bring new services to market in a few months or less, with little or no incremental investment.

"With the ATM platform, we started by offering Transparent LAN Service, but now we can begin to implement new value-added services very rapidly," explains Jeff Strasser, senior product manager at CBT. Since the Internet market is growing at a rate of several hundred percent a year, this is the next logical next step for CBT. High-speed Internet access will allow the telco's customers to take full advantage of the multimedia capabilities offered by the World Wide Web. Using this service, customers, suppliers and business partners will be able to access a wide variety of information and applications simultaneously from a centralized Web server.

These CBT customers could also use the service to launch an Intranet-using the tools and technologies offered by the Web to distribute information to, and interact with, company employees.

CBT and NetEdge are also addressing how the next generation of value-added, applications-based services will be delivered over the network. These services could include groupware applications, software distribution, remote channel networking and data archiving, among others. Instead of offering just a transport service, CBT is able to offer customers network-based solutions to their business problems. Martha Wendel is a Network Architect for Cincinnati Bell Telephone, Cincinnati.