Vancouver-based New Edge Networks announced negotiations June 17 with several major telecom companies that want to offer clients New Edge’s latest innovation – a DSL-based service for tagging and prioritizing data traffic.
The service was available in April exclusively through New Edge, which made a multi-million-dollar infrastructure investment to develop it.
Spokesman Sal Cinquegrani said New Edge cannot name parties in negotiation, but that providers will be chosen based on service volume, market focus and distribution models.
“Those large providers have many thousands of sales people on the street (and can) sell more aggressively,” he said. “We grow, they grow and the customers benefit.”
New Edge was the IT industry’s first to develop multi-protocol label switching service classes for DSL networks, using up to five MPLS service classes. Previously this was only available through T1 lines, which cost four to five times more than DSL per month, Cinquegrani said.
“Businesses that want to deploy IP-based applications can (now) do so without making a major network and infrastructure investment,” he said. “You can’t just buy more speed and bigger pipes. You have to figure out how to optimize an existing system, and that’s what this does.”
The new service allows businesses mix and match DSL, T1 and private lines without compromising data traffic priorities. It uses DSL networks to back up T1 networks.
New Edge also renewed and expanded a $1.6 million, multi-year agreement in May with Chicago-based Whitehall Jewelers Inc. to manage a DSL network linking at least 375 of the jewelry chain’s stores in 39 states. The private network will process store transactions, sales polling, web access and email.
New Edge is the business communications unit of Atlanta-based EarthLink Inc., and builds and manages private IP wide-area networks.
