Ethernet Avenue

We've had inquiries asking for advice on serving broadband to condos, so we asked one of the bigger players that you've never heard of to tell us how they do it.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [March 3, 2005]

Within the RBOC Verizon, a CLEC survives. The MDU-focused broadband provider OnePoint retains its URL. Verizon acquired OnePoint for $295 million in December, 2000, as part of an FCC-mandated investment in competition (see Verizon May Not Fulfill FCC Agreement).

Today, Verizon Avenue, as the service is called, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon. It operates a variety of properties served by OnePoint and by the MDU businesses of what were GTE and Bell Atlantic before they too became part of Verizon. Some properties were built on a DSLAM-based approach, with a DSLAM in the basement and copper to every condo unit. Others drive Ethernet to each condo unit.

"It's about 60 percent DSLAM and 40 Ethernet now," says Kelley Dunne, executive director of Verizon Avenue. He expects this ratio to change in Ethernet's favor because most new construction is Ethernet.

Bring in the new
And there's plenty of new construction. Dunne says the company has a system for working with real estate developers. "The general rule of thumb is that the more up front planning you do, the better off you're going to be," he says.

That means planning far in advance. "We try to get involved with owners 18 months in advance of the general occupancy date so we're in the planning process for riser space, telco room space—so we have all our up front requirements submitted to the developer. It's better than trying to pull all the cable at once."

The payoffs are immediate for an ISP. "The resident gets an Ethernet password at the time of move in. They authenticate to the network and get a login screen that they fill out with the billing information. There's no modem, no truck roll—it minimizes the operational expense of a new user. It's easy to see why we're migrating to an Ethernet topology."

The RBOC limits
Being part of the RBOC has its pros and cons. The company caps its speeds at whatever's equivalent to local Verizon DSL service. With Verizon upgrading DSL from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps, Verizon Avenue is also upgrading, but only after the DSL speed is upgraded in any particular area.

Verizon Avenue sells POTS service as a Verizon agent and will trial VoIP as Verizon deploys it. The Verizon VoIP service, currently in trial in one Verizon Avenue property, is called VoiceWing.

The company's target market has changed, and Verizon Avenue now seems focused on providing service in areas where Verizon DSL is not available.

But the service is top notch and competitively priced. I know, because the building I live in is served by Verizon Avenue. I get an Ethernet cable directly to the computer and I pay $19.95 per month. As a gamer, I download large patches, sometimes over 100 MB, and download speeds are about 200 K per second, which is about 1.6 Mbps.

The company did not want to talk about which vendors it uses for anti-spam and anti-virus, but in my area it appears to be the most expensive option, Mirapoint, which does the job very well.

The full list of services offered is:

• 6 E-mail accounts
• Webmail
• 10 MB Webhosting space
• Network level virus protection
• Network level spam protection
• Community network page
• Online account management services
• Online support requests and troubleshooting

Verizon Avenue also plans to roll out any services the parent company offers through content partners like MSN and Yahoo!.

Verizon Avenue retains the OnePoint sales and customer support staff, which is very good.

Verizon Avenue clearly has cash to expand. Because it is now trying to serve rural areas, in future it should deploy more fixed wireless. Over the past year, the company delivered wireless broadband service to new military housing in California; to Grundy, a town of 1,200 in Virginia; and to 20 families in the Sauk-Suiattle Indian reservation with the aid of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But that's a story for the future.

The company does continue to deploy in urban areas where there is no Verizon DSL, and is eager to work with real estate developers.

— End