Frontier unveils DWDM blueprint

Continuing its shift toward becoming a data-centric company, Frontier Communications said last week that it would complete its new dense wavelength division multiplexing-based network by the fourth quarter.

The Optronics network will layer Internet protocol, asynchronous transfer mode, frame relay and voice on top of an optical network. A service management platform will let customers view and provision portions of the new network.

The announcement is the latest in a series of moves that pushes the company away from its purely local and long-distance roots, said Mike Smith, an analyst with Probe Research.

"Joe Clayton, [Frontier's president and CEO], came in and clearly refocused the company on data. This doesn't put them up on the same level as the top-tier carriers, but it puts them in a position to compete with them," Smith said.

The new network will encompass 13,000 route miles and is about 50% active, said Doug Hickey, senior vice president of Frontier. "The kinds of requirements customers have are going deeper and deeper into the network. You need to own the plant to support that," he said.

Concentrating on three major customer groups-carriers, large corporate accounts and Internet content providers-the company will use DWDM and internally developed software to provide what it calls "liquid bandwidth."

The concept, according to Hickey, allows customers to massively increase bandwidth usage on an as-needed basis. "We want to be able to turn on the spigot whenever we want. By virtue of having DWDM on top of 24 fiber strands, we've given them a tremendous amount of headroom," he said.

The company already has several large data centers that handle Internet-intensive accounts such as Yahoo! and Big Foot. "We handle about 4.5 billion page views per month. By virtue of having that content, all the access providers want to come to our centers," Hickey said.

Also as part of the network, Frontier will provide customers with a Telecommunications Management Network-based set of applications, including a billing system that lets customers track usage daily via a browser. "What we're finding, especially in the general business market, is that [customers] like to know what kind of bandwidth they're consuming," said Hickey.