MediaOne plots L.A. data attack

MediaOne last week introduced a series of data products and a new business unit that positions the company as one of the first major cable players offering widespread business data services.

The new group, MediaOne Connect, initially will offer three service packages over its Los Angeles fiber network. That network, based on Fore System's asynchronous transfer mode switches and Northern Telecom Sonet equipment, will operate at OC-12 speeds and connect to the Internet through multiple access points.

The cornerstone of the new data service, MetroNet, allows business users to push data across the Los Angeles region at speeds up to 622 Mb/s. Additionally, MediaOne will offer an Internet backbone service and a third package aimed at film and post-production studios. The latter service allows film editors in multiple locations to collaborate on projects using uncompressed video.

"The opportunity we see here is that commercial-grade services for moving data around metro areas are pretty weak," said Scott Tolleson, who will head MediaOne's new business group as vice president and general manager.

Within the Internet backbone service, the company anticipates a lot of demand for private virtual circuits, according to Bob Hunt, director of broadband communications for MediaOne's Western region.

At the lower end of the service spectrum, MediaOne Connect will offer a 4 Mb/s service for $1000 a month. However, Tolleson doesn't expect much demand for slower-speed service given the company's existing cable modem service.

"Smaller business probably will be better served by our cable modem product, but this product will blend very well with the cable modem products to create a very nice work-at-home service," he said.

In a separate announcement, MediaOne said it would license Bellcore's MediaVantage software system for back-office support of its telephony service. MediaOne already has launched voice service over its cable plant in Atlanta and is planning a large-scale rollout in several other markets through 1998.

MediaOne's announcements came on the heels of rumors that several cable modem providers, including @Home and Road Runner, are negotiating to combine their services or team up with AT&T. Last December, MediaOne and Time Warner-controlled Road Runner agreed to merge their respective systems. Executives from MediaOne and AT&T declined comment on the reports.

Although Internet protocol multicast is far from an everyday part of most peoples' lives, communications equipment manufacturers and carriers seem to be taking it ever more seriously.

The IP Multicast Summit, held last week in San Jose, is the second such event, and this year the attendance has doubled, said Martin Hall, co-chair of the IP Multicast Initiative and chief technology officer of event organizer Stardust Technologies. IP multicast enables efficient distribution of multimedia content over the Internet, telecommunications networks, cable systems and satellites.

"With on-line providers like UUNet and MCI offering these services, multicast is starting to seem like much more of a reality," Hall said. "We now have some real-world case studies to learn from," said Hall.

The need for economic bandwidth is driving carriers toward the technology.

"IP multicast is a technology that will allow [Northern Telecom] networks to scale and utilize bandwidth efficiently for services such as videoconferencing, broadcasting and file distribution," said Derek Oppen, vice president of carrier data networks business development at Nortel.

The addition of 11 new organizations to the IPMI illustrates how important the technology will become, Hall said. New members, including Nortel and U S West's MediaOne unit, raise the membership total to about 100.

Also last week, GlobalCast, which offers a protocol-independent interface for IP multicast applications, signed an agreement with Cisco, which developed the PGM reliable transport protocol, to conduct interperability testing and to cooperate on developing open reliable multicast standards.