NOVEMBER 14, 2006 -- AT&T Inc. (search for AT&T) has announced a new service that permits enterprise and wholesale customers to take direct control over their network with the ability to reallocate bandwidth as needed by increasing or decreasing capacity in real time. AT&T's Optical Mesh Service is the first of its kind to allow customers to build and self-administer their own SONET network.
The service is available now in 220 locations nationwide, enabling customers to speed bandwidth capacity to support data and applications to any pre-defined location on their network, when needed, and to seamlessly integrate networked applications and services in real time. The service is powered by AT&T's Intelligent Optical Network, a self-healing network that connects multiple offices and locations on a single network and provides 99.999 percent availability, as well as proactive network management and maintenance, the carrier says.
The carrier believes its AT&T Optical Mesh Service will be especially beneficial as business customers increasingly rely on their networks to power revenue-generating applications, such as e-commerce and other platforms. Businesses large and small will regularly need to reallocate bandwidth to priority applications in response to changing business conditions, AT&T asserts.
"In today's dynamic IT environment, enterprise customers across the U.S. face the daunting task of trying to plan for the unforeseen," said Nick Maynard, senior analyst, communications network infrastructure, the Yankee Group. "With today's service announcement, AT&T offers its clients an on-demand optical solution for continuity and mission-critical business applications and gives AT&T the ability to further leverage its optical network investment while presenting a clear service differentiation in this space."
"This new service puts the power and reach of the AT&T network directly into the hands of customers, enabling unprecedented control over how they choose to route network traffic and increase or decrease the amount of bandwidth needed at any time," said Sandy Brown, vice president, business services, AT&T. "We've designed this service with all of our business customers in mind --from retailers that require more bandwidth as they gear up for the holiday shopping season to manufacturers and other industry players that rely on flexible networks to respond instantly to changing business needs."
Customers can provision additional network capacity with rates up to OC-48 via AT&T's customer portal, AT&T BusinessDirect.
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