Ethernet Services Deliver More Economical Bandwidth as Compared to Legacy Frame Relay and Private Line Services

Cox Business today encouraged IT directors, chief information officers and business owners seeking to better manage operational costs in the challenging economy to take a closer look at Ethernet networking services. Ethernet, the preferred emerging networking technology for businesses, provides higher bandwidth rates and lower costs per bit compared to legacy telecommunications services like Frame Relay and Private Lines - creating an opportunity for significant savings that can be allocated to additional network services or other parts of the organization.

"The vast majority of advanced data networking circuits in use today by businesses utilize legacy technologies such as Frame Relay or Private Line services that were aggressively deployed over the last two decades by regional telecom carriers," said Kristine Faulkner, vice president of product development and management, Cox Business. "Although Ethernet represents an ideal solution for many businesses, these traditional telecom carriers have very little incentive to migrate customers from higher billing legacy services."

According to Vertical Systems Group, the majority of business Ethernet deployment will come from the replacement of legacy services. Ethernet services provide a simpler, more transparent, lower cost and far more scalable transport option than many legacy technologies. Almost all existing customer Frame Relay circuits and more than half of Private Lines operate at a rate of 1.5 Mbps or less. With Ethernet services, businesses get multi-megabit to Gigabit transport speeds for a fraction of the cost per bit as compared to what they currently pay for their legacy services.

"The economy is forcing managers to aggressively and strategically drive cost of out their business. Replacing legacy networking connections with Ethernet is an immediate way to reduce operational costs, while gaining greater flexibility and scalability for future growth," said Rosemary Cochran, principal, Vertical Systems Group. "As businesses make final IT spending and strategy adjustments for 2009, this will be a top consideration."

American National Bank, a regional network of financial institutions based in Omaha, Neb., uses Cox Business Ethernet services to share information between its headquarters location, data center and more than 20 bank branches. The Ethernet solution includes redundant connectivity for enhanced business continuity and supports banking applications including check imaging, ATM data transfer and Internet access.

"By migrating our network from Frame Relay to Ethernet, we were able to double the size of our connections and add redundancy for disaster recovery, without any additional cost," said Jim Burns, senior vice president, American National Bank. "Cox Business worked closely with our team to implement an efficient solution that immediately created a more effective and reliable network and added scalability for future growth."

After experiencing additional reliability and functionality on its core network due to the initial Ethernet migration, American National Bank is now considering a similar evolution with its broader ATM network.

"The value proposition of Ethernet is hard to argue with: more bandwidth for the buck, increased scalability and reliability that, in our case, was far better than our legacy transport services," added Burns.

Cox Business is the fourth largest Ethernet service provider in the U.S., according to Vertical Systems Group, and is the only multiple system cable operator ranked in the top tier. The global Metro Ethernet Forum has certified Cox Business as MEF 9 and 14 compliant, the hallmark of carriers who deliver advanced Ethernet services. Cox Business also leads all providers of small and midsize business data solutions in customer satisfaction, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Major Provider Business Telecommunications Study(SM).