And two become one: Equant integrates Global One - For Starters

Differences in culture can sometimes evaporate the optimism of a merger, and combining two networks has its own challenges, Following a complex business deal, a new Equant was created in July 2001 that includes the former Global One joint venture. Equant officials say they beat their own deadline for integrating the two core networks. "The integration of the IP network core occurred in January [2002] and we finished the integration of the core ATM networks in June, ahead of schedule." says Jack Norris, who as president of customer service and network oversees the development, operation and management of the Equant network.

What remains is harmonizing the product sets offered by the two networks, a task that the carrier expects to complete this month, although there may remain some loose ends until the end of the year. Also going apace is what Equant calls its site optimization program, which is basically deciding which sites the carrier wants to keep or eliminate. Here the schedule will be driven to a large extent by Equant's customers, who might want to delay when the carrier switches the point at which they connect to the network from one location to another.

With the former Equant network spanning about 190 global locations and the Global One network stretching across approximately 65 locations, officials had expected a 50-percent office closure because of network overlap. However, closures have been closer to 30 percent. Officials say the integration of the two networks has been eased because both used Cisco routers and Nortel Passport multiservice switches. A decision not to run IP over ATM had been made at Equant and Global One even prior to the merger because of the notorious ATM cell tax and also because officials note that having to configure two networks increases the chances for errors. Still, eliminating overlay networks is a decision driven as much by financial considerations as by technology, because the carrier claims it's more. economical to have IP ride atop ATM in those markets where circuit costs are high.

Equant both lights up fiber acquired via IRUs (irreducible right of use) and also leases capacity. While from a megabit standpoint (in March the network moved about 625 terabytes of traffic) more traffic runs over Equant's own fiber, the carrier actually spends more money on leased capacity, as the price of bandwidth can run high in some parts of the world. More recently, because of the well-publicized bandwidth glut, the carrier favors short-term leases where these are more economical than lighting up fiber acquired via IRUs.

And although the carrier offers five different classes of service (the newest one is for video traffic) via MPLS-based IP VPNs, as defined by RCF 2547, it's not keen on MPLS for traffic engineering For one, Equant doesn't think that a fast reroute capability is quite there in MPLS to give it a SONET-like restoration capability. Equant also believes that MPLS has scalability issues and adds complexity and cost to the network. For its' IP VPN services, Equant's edge routers do the packet prioritizing while a congestion-free core simply forwards the traffic. So rather than do traffic engineering in the core. Equant prefers to over-provision backbone capacity.

"We engineer pretty close to our needs; it's as close as I've ever been to just-in-time inventory in this industry," says Norris. "We start looking at routes when they start moving up to the 70-percent utilization range, and that's the time to add capacity."

COPYRIGHT 2002 Horizon House Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group