NEW EDGE AIMS FOR UBIQUITY AS FOOTPRINT KEEPS GROWING

New Edge Networks is looking less and less like the Tier 2 and Tier 3 market data CLEC it originally intended to be. This month, the carrier announced interconnection agreements with BellSouth and Choice One that give it access to 1300 new central offices in markets across the Southeast and Midwest.

But the additions don't just increase the size of New Edge's ever expanding “Big Foot” coverage area. The carrier is on its way to becoming the first transcontinental and ubiquitous DSL provider, capable of serving any business customer in any market.

“We call it our loop factory,” said New Edge CEO Dan Moffat, using a phrase the company has long employed. “We're manufacturing access.”

At this point in its evolution, however, New Edge is perhaps not manufacturing access as much as it is aggregating. In large markets, New Edge has as many as four interconnection agreements in place and can offer numerous flavors of DSL, along with T-1 and frame relay, to customers. Its own facilities are small — about 800 COs equipped with synchronous DSL gear — but partnerships with Verizon Communications, SBC Communications, Covad Communications, DSL.net and now Rhythms NetCommunications owner MCI give it access to 75% of the digital loops serving business markets in the U.S., Moffat said. Further negotiations with the RBOCs and other facilities-based CLECs may soon extend that coverage to almost 100%.

Moffat isn't stopping at DSL and T-1 services. New Edge already has a deal with Cox Communications to provide cable modem services to telecommuters and home office users, and is investigating other MSO deals. And for those few remote sites that can't be reached by copper or coax, New Edge is finalizing agreements with satellite broadband carriers.

So why the push to every conceivable market? Moffat explained it's a simple business strategy focusing on making New Edge a pure access carrier. Its marketing mantra for Big Foot is to offer “access to any business address anywhere in the U.S.,” and that can only be done with an all-encompassing footprint.

“About three years ago we made a strategy decision to focus solely on business and carrier customers,” Moffat said. “When you're talking about businesses and carriers, they want ubiquity. There are only two ways to achieve ubiquity: either build out 25,000 COs or get interconnection agreements. We opted for interconnection. The key is managing the complexity of all of these platforms. That's where we have our advantage.”

New Edge's reach may be vast, but the trick is to get its customer base to catch up. New Edge's overall number of COs is rapidly outpacing its total number of lines in service — the carrier still has to sell it to the business community, said Nancy Kaplan, analyst with Adventis.

“They're building a pretty strong ship,” Kaplan said. “But so far their strategy is geographic. They need to show that the network behind all of this access is up to par, that they can provide transport to all these customers seamlessly.”

New Edge connects its networks through a nationwide ATM backbone and 600 Alcatel multi-service switches. The carrier is optimizing the network for business-class VoIP services.