Covad, CENX Make Ethernet Progress

In further news coinciding with the beginning of CompTel, CENX and Covad offered updates on their Ethernet offerings.

CENX announced that its Carrier Ethernet exchange has surpassed 5 accessible million locations, and they expect that number to double by the end of the second quarter.  That’s an interesting metric that I’m sure we will be hearing more about.  It’s not the size of CENX’s exchange so much as the size of the combined customer footprint – I do wonder how they calculate such a number and what exactly is a ‘location’.  Sometimes I expect that it is a single building, but a large datacenter with multiple carrier PoPs who are connected to CENX would have many – yes?  Nevertheless, the whole point of such an exchange is to make it easier for carriers to reach off-net locations with their Ethernet offerings, and therefore the extent of that reach is an important metric.  What I don’t yet know is how big that number is relative to how big it might get.  Any ideas on what level would constitute critical mass?

Competitive provider Covad announced its nationwide Ethernet services, to be formally available in mid April.  The business class offerings will offer CoS and QoS with strong SLAs, able to support a wide variety of next generation data products.  Since going private, Covad has continued to transform itself into a nextgen service provider.  It seems like quite a long time ago now that the company’s sole business was reselling copper DSL lines from the ILEC.  Since going private, it has been harder to get a handle on where the company is headed but they have been making more noise lately.  In fact, they now have a longhaul network map for me to add to my list.

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Categories: CLEC · Ethernet