Well, sorry to all being a tease, but our legal consensus is to not share the state telecom backbone infrastructure information to a quasi-public group under the guise of "protecting trade secrets". I really can't make any statements about other companies' networks (even though we may have a good clue about them) under the same interests of not having them run their mouths about our protected network details. "Do Unto Others".
This isn't to say you may be able to get more backbone infrastructure information out of the VTA; they have different interests at heart than the carrier crowd themselves. Still I bet they won't part with it unless there is a need to know, since they had to cultivate the same time and trust to acquire the information themselves. I can make statements about TelJet's network that may be useful in deciding telecom choices, as an officer of the company. Some of it feels like marketing spewage, but from the desk of the resident engineer/MBA egghead this is all the truth. We: - are 100% Vermont owned and operated. We prefer being a small shop that is focused on a handful of larger customers instead of copying the cable or DSL model. - have a unique and diverse path from all of the other providers in the state. - have over 150 miles of underground backbone (saved our butts multiple times already in wind and ice storms). - have unique upstream Internet providers (we do share one common upstream provider with Sovernet but both of us have diverse secondaries). - own all of our fiber plant end-to-end from customer to upstream providers, making support much faster, simpler and transparent. - provide a fiber-fed device in lit buildings for monitoring, management and delivery of 10/100TX Cat5 interfaces natively. No DSL/cable modems or T1 routers! You could use a cheapo Best Buy Linksys box (with DD-WRT?) as your edge router, but most companies have a business-class firewall (PIX, Sonicwall, etc.) - have around a Gig (yes, 1000Mbps symmetrical) of Internet available to our customer portfolio, across three upstream providers. - peer with a few other ISPs in the state to reduce in-state traffic flowing through PoPs in NYC or Boston or worse further out. This is a grander social mission that has been tried a few times in the last decade but has failed to get much traction due to the cost of telecom circuits with not much perceived benefit. Our monthly costs are very low once built in to a provider's location and with up to 1Gbps of bandwidth, so we don't have any real expense other than internalized construction costs. We are pushing of more of these connections to other providers as we are building our network out, increasing the quality of connectivity of Vermonters to other in-state destinations. - try hard to connect both consumers and providers of Vermont services, in an effort to connect both better to each other without leaving the state (see the line above). Most providers are heavily focused on the consumer side with many of the services accessed by Vermonters in data centers out of state. We have looked for the various Vermont-based sources of information to put on our network, again for differentiation in our network "quality" by reducing connectivity hops and cost metering. - so far have shunned T1 and DSL-based services. We may have to get into those markets in a few years but we have enough going on without that level of headaches (operations and marketing, both). Looking at our expertise and business model, we'd rather help other providers figure that out and haul traffic around in bulk between Verizon offices for them. This is part of the reason we've set our service floor at 3Mbps or a service requiring a 10Mbps line, to distinguish our services. - are working on a collocation solution that matches our network assets. This has had tremendous success in cultivating disaster recovery (DR) plans for larger companies, who are being squeezed by their clients and insurance companies for a CYA plan to be in place. We frequently pitch 2U of DR colo, 100Mbps between the colo device and the fiber-fed corporate office, and 5-10Mbps of Internet delivered at either location. A really hot item, especially when changing old-skool tapes goes by the wayside and the IT guys can relax some daily monotony. - are open to creative connectivity options. If you want to come to one of our service locations with wireless to pick up services, I'm all for making it work. We have a WISP who did this, drastically cutting installation costs and timeframes for fiber plant. Another is considering it. No reason a corporate customer or power user couldn't do this either. - may lease 45Mbps DS3s (none yet) or shoot 10-50Mbps wireless (only one so far) to get into service pockets where we don't have fiber yet. Both are intended to be temporary until we can build into an area; the wireless link should be replaced by fiber by September of this year. - don't have or need a trouble ticket system. Only one service call in the last 100 days, and that was because of a workaround hack to Level3's broken network that broke when one of our upstreams fat-fingered its BGP session to us. They got hell for that. The one prior was in late February when a CPE's power supply melted down. We can release information about our network and additional competitive advantages to authorized agents of companies who are interested in receiving service. Give us a call and we can arrange for a meeting with service info, relevant maps, pricing, custom stuff, etc. You should be looking for business-class symmetrical 3Mbps or 2Mbps-burst10Mbps and we can cater to you; the <$100/mo crowd is not where we think we can make any money. And we wouldn't with construction costs for new fiber being what they are - look at Burl Telecom's business model until recently as published in the Free Press a month ago... With just four staffers, we can't afford to be anyone's tech support either; by the time most customers are looking at our service they should have a competent IT guy/consultant enrolled. So hopefully this gives you a good snapshot in what we've built over the past five years. It's quite a bit different than other carriers, by design. We like it simple with proven technologies, which lead to the network being stable, reliable, easy to fix, and cost effective. Unfortunately this means sacrificing copper-based services (T1, DSL, and dial-up) and the resulting coverage ubiquity of the network, but this has led us to at least two orders of magnitude fewer trouble tickets and much less staff. Customers love it and we haven't lost a renewal yet. -Dave _____ From: Vermont Area Group of Unix Enthusiasts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Gratton Sent: Wednesday, 11 June, 2008 13:05 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: ISP Questions Wow Dave... The organization that I work for will definitely consider TelJet. In fact, you are at top of the short list now Thank you for all of the useful information. I look forward to anything you are allowed to share in your draft about the current backbone infrastructure that you mentioned. It sounds like it will be incredibly helpful in making decisions that will guarantee that you do not pick a back-up provider that uses the same infrastructure as the primary/main telecom provider. No matter if you can disclose any information or not, it's nice to know that there is a place that I can contact in the Vermont Telecom Authority to try and gather more information for these purposes. Mike - Thanks to you as well for all of the information. I definitely found it to be helpful. Take care, John Gratton Have a good day. On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 8:56 PM, David Storandt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hello, all - I've been quiet here, so I figure I should pipe up since this is exactly what I do... <sales plug> I'm the CTO for TelJet, a local fiber-based ISP/construction company. We build custom telecom installations for various companies, until now, focused in Middlebury and metro Burlington, with a dribble of efforts in Rutland. We focus on putting buildings on our fiber network, and creative customer solutions that Verizon wouldn't do. We target our Internet service at 3Mbps and up, to stay out of the me-too T1 game that lots of other CLECs do. Our network (so far) is 100% Ethernet based, with every building entrance fiber served with Gigabit Ethernet. No Verizon or Level3 circuits... We drop service to a copper 10/100TX port and deliver transport, Internet, etc. Existing customers have bumped up in the same day to a higher tier of service performance (pending paperwork), since everything is delivered on 1000Mbps and is only limited in software on our core hardware. Headliner customers include UVM, Middlebury College, St. Mike's, Vermont Railway, Shoreham Telephone, and Middlebury schools. Numerous Champlain Valley WISPs also have service from us. This year's pipeline for new construction is very full too - busy busy busy. We also have a VOIP solution that has seen excellent performance but we still recommend a POTS backup line, say a fax machine, for 911 lifeline and 411 directory assistance. If you have an office located in one of our "lit" buildings, we can turn on service as fast as we can get a Cat5 cable run from our local electronics to your suite, and chase paperwork. We've had lots of customers and prospects complain about interacting with Level3's corporate machine. If service is running great, well, great. If service is having an issue it's usually a long, painful, and frustrating process. Your mileage may vary, but by the time we are talking to Level3 customers they are fed up with them which will bias our view of the market... If you are looking for 3Mbps+ services in metro Burlington or Middlebury, give us a shot! We don't bite, honest! =P </sales plug> Ok. Now that shop is over with, back to the infrastructure question. Mike's mostly close - Sovernet uses a mix of Verizon, TelJet, and Level3. Comcast and Level3 share cable throughout much of their networks (think Adelphia and Adelphia Business Solutions as sister companies, before the fallout around 2000). I have drafted something for this group reflecting the state's current telecom backbone infrastructure. Understand, this is high-level state-focused industry sensitive information that we've (TelJet) spent a lot of time and trust to accumulate. Since our business is focused in this exact area, I need to review our NDAs first just to make sure I'm not violating anything by dropping the full monty here. I don't have a list of VAGUE members and frankly can't contractually bind ALL of you unless I build a ask-NDA-give channel. The far easier approach is to make sure I can release this info quasi-publicly. Frankly, I'm interested to hear your concerns, reflections, or corrections to make sure everything is accurate for all interested parties here. All of the information I have can be assembled from the Vermont Telecom Authority (at least in majority, if not all) but they can also be restricted by NDAs from various telecom companies. You have to ask and build a relationship with them before they will tell you; this again is not the sort of thing posted to the public. More tomorrow when I can review our NDA stockpile. -Dave Quoting Mike Raley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> from Tue, 10 Jun 2008: Actually... Does anybody know where we can find information regarding which ISP's share the same infrastructure here in Vermont? Well, I can think of one or two people who can probably tell you, so, hopefully one or two of them will chime in here. However, I do believe the following is true: Sovernet uses Verizon Teljet uses their own BT uses their own locally, but uses a mixture for transport Level3 uses their own Comcast uses level3? I believe most of the major players also have some peering arrangements with the others. Level3 aside (otherwise their recent problem wouldn't have been that bad?) anyone care to take a stab at this one and point out where I am probably horribly wrong? Dave? Mike ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
