FX goes remote

Electric Lightwave Inc. is hoping to leverage its network infrastructure to offer customers a remote form of foreign exchange service that incumbent carriers may have difficulty matching.

ELI business accounts in Phoenix will be able to obtain phone numbers in several remote cities, enabling their customers in those cities to dial a local number to reach them. The business accounts in Phoenix also can save money on long-distance calls to those cities, which may be billed as local calls.

Regional Bell operating company FX services typically are restricted to a metropolitan area because regulations prevent RBOCs from crossing LATA boundaries. At least one competitive local exchange carrier-Focal Communications-offers the equivalent of FX service within a metro area, enabling customers to minimize the cost of local calls. But ELI may be the first CLEC to offer FX service between metro areas, said David Boileau, local telephone service product line manager for the company.

"We saw there was an opportunity," said Boileau. "We had a large customer that became our anchor tenant and made it possible for us to set this up and incur a revenue stream very quickly."

Business customers can obtain remote FX service between several metro markets that ELI serves, including Boise, Idaho; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Sacramento; Salt Lake City; and Spokane, Wash. Between cities, calls travel on ELI's regional fiber network. In addition, the company offers remote FX service between Phoenix and several Arizona cities-Flagstaff, Yuma, Prescott and Tucson-where it does not have its own local switch. To support this service, the company expanded transport from its own switch in Phoenix to incumbent tandem switches in the other markets, said Boileau.

Boileau expects the remote FX service to be popular with Internet service providers. "ISPs can expand [their service areas] without a capital investment in each area," he said.

CLECs have an advantage over incumbents in offering FX-type services because they typically have only one or two switches in a metro area, each serving phone numbers in multiple rate centers. Incumbents typically have many more local switches, each supporting only a single rate center, and must run a dedicated line between two switches to offer FX service.

Although Focal's Virtual Office service is similar to an FX line, the company did not use the FX moniker because it felt that was too limiting, said John Barnicle, Focal's chief operating officer.

"An FX line would include numbers from a single exchange," said Barnicle. "We include numbers from multiple exchanges to a single line."

Telephony has bolstered its sales staff with a veteran of telecommunications industry publishing, naming Gary Moffat as its new associate publisher.

Moffat has worked in telecom for 18 years, most recently as a vice president and group publisher for Adams Business Media, where he oversaw nine magazines. Before that, he was publisher of America's Network and managed the magazine's transition from its identity as Telephone Engineer & Management.

He has also held public relations positions with Centel, a carrier since acquired by Sprint, and telecom equipment provider Reltec. In addition, Moffat was a writer for the Chicago Tribune for five years.

"Gary's telecom experience in the carrier, vendor and publishing arenas makes him a significant addition to Telephony's management team," said Mark Hickey, publisher of Telephony. "Telephony's advertisers and readers alike will benefit from his excellent insight and knowledge of our market."

Moffat, who holds a bachelor's degree in communications from Columbia College, will manage the sales efforts for all Telephony publications and help direct marketing and product development for Telephony print and electronic products.

He will work in Telephony's Chicago office and can be reached at (312) 840-8473 or gary_moffat@intertec.com.