AT&T plays down WorldCom’s Internet significance

AT&T today tried to squelch the industry’s fears about a collapsing WorldCom, saying it and other Tier 1 carriers could easily absorb WorldCom’s IP data load if the carrier was forced to shut down UUNET.

At an analyst conference today, AT&T Chief Technology Officer and AT&T Labs head Hossein Eslambolchi said WorldCom’s dominance of U.S. data traffic has been grossly exaggerated and enough capacity and infrastructure exists among other carriers to take up WorldCom’s slack. While estimates of WorldCom’s share of IP traffic in the U.S. have gone as high as 28%, AT&T insists a more accurate estimate would be 12% to 13%, numbers that AT&T is fast approaching.

“Based on our growth rate, we’re lined up to overtake UUNET in overall IP traffic by the end of the year,” Eslambolchi said. “If the question is whether AT&T and the rest of the industry can absorb the traffic, the answer is definitely yes.”

Eslmabolchi went as far to say that AT&T alone could take over WorldCom’s IP burden with minor augmentation to its network and cooperation from ILECs for last mile connections. He said AT&T’s buildout over the last four years has resulted in a nationwide OC-192 network core, easily capable of handling the data loads.

According to Eslmabolchi, AT&T would only have to build out in certain markets to handle the backbone chores WorldCom does today. He pointed to AT&T’s success in transferring more than 1 million Excite@Home customers over to its network last year when the cable ISP went bankrupt. AT&T built a redundant network in 55 days, and completed the transfer in 5 days – a rate of one customer every 2 seconds, Eslmabolchi said.

“It’s a myth that Internet traffic is at risk because it depends on one provider,” Eslambolchi said. “Many of the concerns expressed in recent weeks are overstated.”