Harvard, fast Harvard

At a time when many other carriers want to get back to core competencies and outsource non-essential lines of business, data competitive local exchange carrier HarvardNet stands out as both expansive and focused.

The breadth is in its wide product line: high-speed DSL, Web hosting, virtual private networks (VPNs) and enhanced Web services. The focus comes from offering these services only in the coastal areas of a 10-state swath from Maine to Virginia.

Not that that's a bad place to be, said Joseph Bartlett, HarvardNet's vice president of marketing. A full third of the nation's spending on Internet access and telecommunications occurs in that 500-mile region.

HarvardNet began life as an imaging software company in 1993, then became a regional ISP in 1995. In 1996, HarvardNet became the first company to deploy DSL commercially in New England.

"In DSL terms, that makes us a dinosaur," Bartlett said. The carrier received its first CLEC certification in Massachusetts in 1998. That's when CEO Mark Washburn came on board, along with an infusion of venture capital.

For Internet access, HarvardNet offers DSL, full or fractional T-1 and T-3 lines and frame relay. Incumbent Bell Atlantic features asymmetrical DSL; HarvardNet's offering is symmetrical because, Bartlett said, "businesses care about upstream speeds." Other competitors in the region include national players Covad Communications, NorthPoint Communications and Rhythms NetConnections and regional contender Network Access Solutions.

In VPNs, the carrier aims its RemoteConnect product at large businesses that put high speed before high security. RemoteConnect is a secure WAN today, but HarvardNet plans to revamp it as a LAN extension, perhaps as early as next year.

Both DSL and VPN networks are designed to penetrate deep into HarvardNet's regional market. "Rather than cherry-picking the major metro areas, we're trying to go into the outlying bedroom communities in a 60-mile radius so that we can have a strong VPN offering," Bartlett said. "To serve telecommuters, you need to be where people live."

One strategic advantage a regional high-speed player enjoys is that it only has to manage relations with a single incumbent LEC. "Dealing with one incumbent consistently tends to make for good carrier diplomacy," said Regina Fuller an analyst for Tel-Data. "Lines get provisioned in half the time, and DSL [access multiplexers] go into central offices on the double."

Something like that has been happening between HarvardNet and Bell Atlantic. A handful of HarvardNet employees are former Bell-heads, so relations usually were good. But they improved substantially last year with the arrival Bell Atlantic's SCOPE program - Secure Co-location in an Open Physical Environment, Barlett said. That initiative allows CLECs to co-locate DSLAMs in the RBOC's COs without renting a whole 100 sq. ft. cage - reducing the cost from about $60,000 per DSLAM to as little as $7000.

HarvardNet hopes the diplomacy continues. With 105 DSLAMs deployed now, the carrier wants to have 615 up and running throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic by 2001, and that will mean continued fast access to Bell Atlantic COs.

Simultaneously, HarvardNet is constructing a network of Web operations centers that will take on the chores of high-end dedicated hosting for some of its business clients. A 20,000 sq. ft. center in Boston now is open, with others slated to open in Long Island, N.Y., and in northern New Jersey in 2000, and two more planned for Washington and Philadelphia in 2001.