The business comms division of UK cable market heavyweight Virgin Media, which is listed in the US but headquartered in Hook, UK, has already cornered the market for backhauling the country’s mobile traffic, according to its director of service provider business Paul Rusby.
Now we’re into the upgrade cycle, he said. He said that currently entails a leased line connection between mobile operators’ base stations and their core networks, so the plan is now to move those links to circuit emulation services over Ethernet, representing a cost saving for both the carrier and its mobile operator customers. NTL:Telewest is close to signing a deal with suppliers of the technology underpinning the CES.
He said the move has a precedent at NTL:Telewest in that it already provides the majority of the backhaul for alternative carriers that have invested in the country’s local loop unbundling. We run connections into their digital local exchanges with Ethernet backhaul over fiber, he said. Companies such as Opal Telecom (part of Carphone Warehouse) and Tiscali are customers for this service.
He said another area of product development is in unmanaged IP VPN. We’ve had managed IP VPN for some time, but a couple of months ago we detected a demand from systems integrators for an unmanaged IP VPN, which enables them to put their box onto our fiber, he said.
