XO Upgrades to OC-192 Backbone

XO Communications Inc. (www.xo.com) said yesterday that it is migrating services and customer traffic onto its upgraded OC-192 Internet backbone, which serves core locations in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Jose and Washington, D.C. Other XO markets will be connected to these hubs via dual OC-12c circuits.

“The completion of its national IP backbone is a significant step for XO,” Tim McElgunn, senior analyst and program manager of Stratecast Partners' (www.stratecast.com) Competitive Operator Strategies Practice, said in a statement. “While the upgrade will clearly have immediate benefits in terms of network capacity and flexibility, at a strategic level, operational efficiencies will likely prove just as important over time. As XO's cost to serve existing and new customers declines and its ability to add new services improves, those benefits should translate directly into increased revenue and improved margins.”

In addition to the inherent improvements in network redundancy, security and performance associated with the OC-192 infrastructure, the upgrade will also allow XO to begin offering customers future IP-based services, such as voice over IP, unified messaging and other prioritized Internet applications and services.

For the upgrade, XO deployed Juniper Networks’ (www.juniper.net) Internet backbone M160 routers in the eight hub locations. The majority of the OC-192 network is commercially operational today. All hub locations are expected to operational by the end of November, according to XO.

XO is also deploying Juniper’s M40 routers to direct and manage network traffic generated from its metro fiber rings. All XO metro markets will be connected to the OC-192 backbone by year’s end.

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