With an agreement now in place, Verizon will start building its network-to-network interface to the CENX Carrier Ethernet Exchange while ramping up its wholesale marketing to Tier 2 and Tier 3 providers.
If all goes well with its trial in New York City, Verizon will extend its relationship with CENX Inc. to other exchanges in Chicago and Los Angeles.
Verizon offers certified Carrier Ethernet services to its global wholesale customers via the New York CENX Exchange, which allows those customers to deliver Ethernet services in the city.
CENX uses carrier-neutral and co-location/data-center neutral exchanges to interconnect service providers’ Carrier Ethernet networks around the world. Over the last eight years, CENX has taken a leading role in defining Carrier Ethernet and has implemented telecom interconnection through its work in the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF).
The exchange opens a new market for Verizon. “Often, we have small and medium-sized customers wanting to do businesses with us, especially for switched Ethernet services, but network interface into their [point-of-presence] as a barrier to entry,” said Larry O’Neil, Ethernet product development manager at Verizon.
O’Neil said that coming to the table for one or two circuits doesn’t justify the investment in a 1 GB network interface. “But as a member of the exchange we are all on equal footing and it allows them to come to us the same way they would go to anyone. So it opens the Tier 2 and 3 customer for us.”
Users of the exchange configure their own network interconnection to CENX, which then handles the translations and interoperability between providers, and in this case, Verizon. By using the CENX Market real-time portal, members of the CENX exchange planning for the delivery of Ethernet services are able to quickly confirm the details of specific Verizon service offerings.
Nan Chen, co-founder and CEO of CENX, said his exchange is the world’s first operational service-level interconnect that addressing all of the logistic, technical, management, business and expertise challenges faced by our customers. “CENX achieves this through several technological approaches that preserve our customers’ differentiation when cross-connecting over others’ networks while providing significant cost savings and making Carrier Ethernet ubiquitous around the world,” he said.
The criterion for success is simple. “Going into this, we have certain expectations to capture that Tier 2 and 3 markets. If that is successful we will look at the other markets and see what opportunities we may have there,” O’Neil said, without giving a timeline.
