Small Carrier, Big Pipes

Georgia PCS finds a backhauling solution from a fellow rural carrier.

As carriers roll out additional voice and data applications, they constantly are searching for ways to get their hands on a little additional bandwidth to deliver their services efficiently to a growing subscriber base. Carriers are saving their pennies to bid on additional spectrum, as well as implementing network-optimization tools, all in the name of increasing their bandwidth. But large wireless carriers with millions of customers are not the only ones that need extra bandwidth. Even the smallest regional carriers with a few thousand customers need to widen their pipes if they want to move both voice and data quickly to and from their customers.

Although large longhaul carriers offer extensive fiber networks for backhaul, they don't always reach into the small rural markets that local wireless carriers cover. Sometimes the most well-respected names in the fiber business can't offer what a rural wireless carrier really needs: coverage. It may take a little digging, but the myriad of backhaul alternatives present these smaller wireless carriers with a large pool of solutions from which to draw.

Rural Operations

Georgia PCS faced a huge problem when it needed to transport traffic from its 160 cell sites in rural Georgia to its single switching center in Macon, GA. After exploring backhaul options from local carriers such as BellSouth (www.bellsouth.com) and Alltel (www.alltel.com), as well as some national fiber carriers such as Sprint (www.sprint.com), MCI Worldcom (www.mci.worldcom.com) and AT&T (www.att.com), Georgia PCS finally chose the services of USCarrier (www.uscarrier.com), a Georgia-based fiber carrier that provides wireless carriers with wholesale point-to-point bandwidth for their data, voice and video traffic.

Georgia PCS formed in 1995 when a group of independent telephone companies in Georgia, Tennessee and Florida wanted to begin offering wireless service. The company originally planned to operate as an independent C-block carrier, and it ended up winning three licenses to do so. But in 1998, it decided to become a Sprint PCS (www.sprintpcs.com) affiliate, so it traded in its C-block licenses and now operates as a D-block carrier. Georgia PCS officially launched its wireless service in March 1999, and it now provides service for Sprint PCS to 20,000 customers in a small part of the Atlanta BTA, as well as six other BTAs across the state to the Tennessee and Florida borders.

Backhauling Challenges

With so many options available for transporting traffic from cell sites out to a switching center, the most difficult part of finding a backhaul solution these days is sorting through the mountain of solutions. But Georgia PCS' network posed some challenges that made choosing a backhaul carrier to move traffic to and from its switching center in the middle of the state a daunting task.

At first, most of Georgia PCS' cell sites were in central Georgia, so the carrier simply purchased access on BellSouth or Alltel facilities to bring the traffic to the Macon-based switch.

“But as soon as we started expanding our network away from Macon to north and southeast Georgia, we had to look at other alternatives for getting the traffic to Macon,” said Rob Brooks, Georgia PCS COO.

It was during this expansion that Georgia PCS ran into a glitch. Georgia is divided into regional areas, known as Local Access and Transport Areas (LATAs), in which a local telephone company legally is allowed to operate, said Daryl Crosby, Georgia PCS switching-center manager.

“BellSouth, even though it operates amongst various different LATAs, cannot haul traffic across those LATA boundaries, as part of the decree when the government broke up the Bells,” he explained. “Rather than cross the border, BellSouth has to give that traffic to an interexchange carrier such as Sprint or Qwest.”

Because Georgia PCS covers one end of the state to the other, its network crosses several LATAs, in which various phone companies — from BellSouth to Alltel to many small independent telephone companies — operate. As a result, Georgia PCS was faced with breaking up its network, carrying part of its traffic on networks from independent LECs in some areas and from Alltel or BellSouth in other LATAs. But to help reduce backhaul costs, Georgia PCS wanted a single major carrier to provide it with fiber connections throughout the state.

“One of the major costs of our entire network operation is backhaul,” Brooks said. “We have only one switching center, and we have to transport a lot of traffic from all of our cell sites around the state, not only inbound back into our switch but outbound to other Georgia PCS phones, other wireless carriers or to landline terminations.”

Georgia PCS checked out several of the large national carriers but found that these companies did not reach into many of its rural markets. The big carriers were more interested in hauling traffic from Atlanta to cities such as Jacksonville, Chattanooga or Charleston, Brooks said.

“Obviously, as a Sprint PCS affiliate, we clearly would like to use Sprint's long-distance facilities as much as possible, but at the same time, Sprint is not in a lot of these small rural territories that we are looking at, so we had to find someone that matched up with our network,” he explained.

The Rural Connection

After weighing its options, Georgia PCS looked into USCarrier, a company that provides, among other services, high-speed point-to-point digital bandwidth services at DS1 and OC48 speeds. USCarrier operates multiple dense-wave division-multiplexing (DWDM) segments between major cities in Georgia, north Florida and southeast Tennessee. Its network consists of SONET-based, self-healing, fiber-optic-ring facilities, and it is monitored and managed by USCarrier Network Operation Center, also in Macon.

Like Georgia PCS, USCarrier is a consortium of various independent telephone companies throughout Georgia. Originally called Georgia Independent Telephone Group, the 20 wireline carriers began building a fiber network throughout Georgia in 1997 to connect the companies. Soon, the fiber network became an asset to sell to other service providers such as ISPs and wireless carriers, said Ron Morrison, USCarrier director of sales and marketing. The company changed its name in 1998 to USCarrier Telecom and now has between 2,000 and 2,500 miles of fiber in both metropolitan cities and in rural areas such as Canton, Darien, Douglas, Metter and Valdosta. USCarrier sells wholesale transport services to its owners; other service providers such as ISPs or wireless carriers; governments and municipalities; and interconnect partners.

Although there is some overlapping ownership between the two companies, Georgia PCS chose USCarrier's services due to their common footprint, not their common ownership.

“I have a responsibility to a set of investors, so Georgia PCS is always looking for the highest-quality service at the most efficient cost,” Brooks said. “USCarrier was very competitive in its pricing and provided some very personalized service to us that we may not have been able to receive from a larger carrier.”

Not only did USCarrier offer Georgia PCS the opportunity to consolidate as much of its traffic onto one network as possible, but it also houses a NOC down the road from Georgia PCS' switching center.

“We felt like we could get major carrier-type service from someone who also could offer a local flavor and a local face to us,” Brooks said. USCarrier has fiber in a lot of areas where some of the major carriers like AT&T or MCI just pass on through.”

Georgia PCS has ordered 100 circuits from USCarrier, which claims to be able to turn up service within five to 10 days, compared to larger carriers that might take one to three months to turn up service.

“Using multiple carriers might have meant Georgia PCS can turn up one site in 10 days and another in 120 days, making it difficult for them to manage,” Morrison said. “As a single source, we can turn up a lot of these sites very quickly for them at a very attractive price.”

Georgia PCS began hauling traffic on USCarrier's network midway through 2000, and it has added close to 120 cell sites in the last six months.

Although it is loyal to USCarrier, Georgia PCS still uses other carriers for services outside of backhaul. It buys T1s from BellSouth, Alltel and the independent LECs to transport traffic from its cell sites back to some of USCarrier's points-of-presence; and in central Georgia, the wireless carrier hauls a lot of traffic on a SONET ring from BellSouth.

Expanding Territory

USCarrier is expanding its network to become a regional carrier. Its own network now reaches into Alabama, Florida and Tennessee, but interconnect partners help the company stretch its network to cover 20,000 fiber miles up the East Coast into Canada. The expanding network has attracted more wireless carriers, including Nextel (www.nextel.com) and Powertel (www.powertel.com).

At this point, Georgia PCS has launched all of its licensed areas, but the carrier is continuing to expand in some areas to fill some holes in its network and increase capacity in certain areas, Brooks said.

As a wireless carrier, Brooks said Georgia PCS is not very concerned about which route its traffic takes to get to its switching center, as long as it does not increase overall cost.

“If it gets hauled around the state a bit, it doesn't bother us, as long as we get quality of service and a financially efficient network,” Brooks said.

But as USCarrier expands, Brooks looks forward to added protection for Georgia PCS. For instance, if there is a fiber cut somewhere in the USCarrier network, an expanded network means more rerouting alternatives, which in turn means more protection alternatives.

“The type of service we are buying is protected service, so everything we have got is on a ring; if we have a cut, it goes into protection mode and reroutes traffic in a different direction to get back to us,” Brooks explained.

Georgia PCS' case is not unique. Small rural wireless carriers throughout the country face similar backhaul challenges. Maybe they can't afford more than one switching center, forcing them to haul traffic from remote cell sites to a central point. Maybe the large longhaul carriers' footprints don't step into these small cities and towns. Although their networks may not be as extensive, local fiber carriers are worth considering as a backhaul alternative, as they often can provide wireless carriers with a customized and efficient solution.

---

Betsy Harter (betsyharter@aol.com) is a freelance writer based in Athens, GA.

Co-Ownership

m		Accucomm Telecommunications
m		Alma Telephone Company
m		Brantley Telephone Company (www.btconline.net)
m		Bulloch Telephone (www.bulloch.net)
m		Citizens Telephone (www.sowega.net)
m		Coastal Utilities (www.clds.net)
m		Comsouth Telecommunications
m		Darien Telephone Company (www.darientel.net)
m		Ellijay Telephone (www.ellijay.com)
m		Hargray Communications (www.hargray.com)
m		Hart Telephone (www.hartcom.net)
		Loretto Telephone Company (www.lorettotel.net)
		Northeast Florida Telephone Company (www.nefcom.net)
m		Pembroke Telephone (www.pemtelco.com)
m		Pineland Telephone (www.pineland.net)
m		Plant Telephone Company (www.planttel.net)
m		Planters Telephone (www.planters.net)
m		Progressive Rural TelephoneCoop (www.progressivetel.com)
m		Public Service Telephone (www.patel.com)
m		Ringgold Telephone Company (www.catt.com)
m		Waverly Hall
m		Wilkes Telephone Company (http://web.wilkes.net)
m		USCarrier Owners
		Georgia PCS Owners

Bandwidth, Please

Due to a huge increase in the number of Internet/intranet subscribers, as well as the commercialization of high-speed content such as video-on-demand, Korea Telecom Freetel (KTF) (http://home1.no16.com) needed more bandwidth to handle increased growth.

“KTF is evolving from a mobile CDMA operator providing 2G mobile Internet services like SMS to a mobile ISP providing comprehensive, extended services such as VPNs and high-speed mobile IP services,” explained Kim SungChul, KTF manager of network strategy.

KTF, with 5 million subscribers and growing, chose Ericsson's (www.ericsson.com) packet backbone network (PBN) to help it handle the growth in mobile IP services and subscribers as it migrates to its new cdma2000-1X EV-DO/EV network. KTF has used Ericsson's PBN platforms, the AXD 301 ATM Switch, and AXI 540 Edge Aggregation Router for about two years. SungChul said the AXD 301 and AXI 540 provide quality of service and VPN services via multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) across the PBN.

“MPLS enables intelligent allocation of bandwidth resources and prioritization of voice and data packets through traffic engineering, allowing us to offer customers a wide range of value-added services,” SungChul said.

Of course, carriers never can have too much bandwidth. SungChul expects that KTF still will need increased bandwidth in the future. In the meantime, the carrier will resolve problems at the site using commercial tools that can identify data problems.

“We will address problems by accurately forecasting future subscriber demand and building on the success of the PBN,” SungChul said.