BellSouth Pumps Up Managed Services

As part of its effort to tap the multitrillion-dollar e-business marketplace, BellSouth Monday beefed up its menu of enterprise services, rolling out enhancements to its frame relay, VPN and remote access service platforms.

The carrier took the wraps off two new frame relay services--Intelligent Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVCs) and Priority PVCs. The first automatically reroutes a customer's data traffic to a back-up host within 60 seconds in the event of a service disruption. The second lets an IT manager place a priority on voice and/or data traffic traveling through a PVC to make sure critical information is delivered.

Both services, based on technology supported by Lucent Technologies' Jade frame relay switches, will be available over the next three months, according to Susan Steele, a BellSouth senior director. Intelligent PVCs are priced at $4 per PVC.

Priority PVCs, meanwhile are aimed at customers that want to move voice over their frame relay connections, Steele said. The service will let a company give precedence to voice traffic or a specific data app as well as locations from which those packets are sent. The service is priced at $10 per CIR (committed information rate).

For corporate customers outside of BellSouth's operating region, the frame relay services will be offered via network-to-network interfaces between BellSouth's network and pipes owned by partner Qwest Communications International Inc.

BellSouth's new managed VPN service, meanwhile, bolsters the carrier's two-year-old Virtual Private Dial Network (VPDN) service. The new offering consists of two products: Secure Remote Client, geared to distant users; and Managed Site-to-Site, for branch office locations.

Both services rely on 3 DES encryption; Remote Client is based on Nortel Networks' Contivity switch; Site-to-Site is based on Cisco routers.

BellSouth is charging from $12 per month for dial-up to more than $750 per month for Managed Site-to-Site. The VPN offering also comes with an SLA guaranteeing latency of 85 milliseconds or less for round-trip transmissions and site availabilities of 99.5 percent. Uunet will provide out-of-region access.

BellSouth's remote access service is geared to ISPs and enterprises that want to outsource their dial-up modem ports to the carrier. The service, based on Nortel equipment, will be available in 24 of BellSouth's 38 major markets by year-end, and priced between $35 and $47 per port per month.

Finally, the carrier launched a new wholesale DSL service aimed at network service providers. The 192 Kbps symmetrical offering will let BellSouth pump DSL to locations up to 18,000 feet away from a central office. It's based on Alcatel DSLAMs.