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MCI Successfully Completes Field and Customer Trial of Converged Packet Access Technology; Chicago Mercantile Exchange Utilizing CPA Technology to Grow Electronic Trading

Posted on: Tuesday, 3 May 2005, 12:00 CDT

MCI, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCIP) today announced the successful completion of both field and customer trials of its Converged Packet Access (CPA) technology capabilities. With MCI's CPA network architecture, businesses will be able to use a single access network for multiple services to achieve cost-effective, expandable and streamlined converged communications platform. Following the success of MCI's CPA field trial of equipment in the Chicago area, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (CME) becomes one of the first MCI customers to move live traffic among customers onto MCI's CPA platform.

With the success of MCI's CPA trials in the Chicago area, MCI is launching its CPA architecture in 24 additional cities across the U.S. by year-end. Some of those cities include Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C./Baltimore.

"We believe that CPA technology is a winning strategy for MCI and customers like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange," said Fred Briggs, president of Operations and Technology for MCI. "Its inherent cost savings and efficiencies will become the benchmark for carrier networks as businesses increasingly require rapid provisioning, scalable bandwidth, and a global communications platform to achieve a simplified converged network environment."

With CPA, packet and optical technologies work together so broadband customers can grow services quickly and efficiently across a single access connection. MCI's initial CPA deployment enables convergence of services over common access facilities. MCI plans to upgrade the CPA platform in 2006 to enable support for a full range of legacy and next generation services, including frame relay, IP VPN, Private IP, Ethernet, Private Line, and voice onto a single packet access connection to the customer via a simple, low-cost Ethernet interface (10bT, 100bT, and Gig E).

MCI and its vendors have constructed the building blocks of the CPA architecture, which include four key components: (1) an Ethernet traffic aggregator; (2) a new Layer 2 and TDM grooming infrastructure; (3) an optical add-drop multiplexer; and (4) a packet-enabled service edge. This equipment allows MCI to aggregate traffic originating from one large business customer or many small business customers in a multi-tenant business building across a single network connection. CPA also allows MCI customers in many cases to take advantage of their existing network equipment, maximizing the value and extending the life of their IT investments.

The CPA technology trial was performed transporting traffic among several MCI hubs in the Chicago area. The equipment configuration for the field trial relied on the Tellabs(R) 8860 multi-service router, the Fujitsu FLASHWAVE(R) 4500 Multiservice Provisioning Platform (MSPP), the ANDA EtherReach 2200 CPE and ANDA EtherEdge 4000 edge aggregation device.

CPA is compatible with most any means of physical access and will accommodate an on-net connection provided directly by MCI or a third-party leased line. Once an initial physical connection is established, MCI customers can logically provision capacity and services as needed without requiring physical changes to the network. In order to provide security and assure the quality of service of customer traffic, MPLS tunneling technology is used to create logical channels that separate customers' services. In the future, customers will be able to manage their networks via an intelligent Web-based portal that provides self-service capabilities.

Today, customer access is time division multiplexed (TDM), requiring separate access lines for each service (voice, video, data, or Internet) along with rigid bandwidth boundaries. Any change, addition, or move requires numerous manual touch points, making it labor intensive. CPA relies on virtual, or logical, connections to the customer, converging all applications on a single carrier-class packet access network as an alternative to legacy TDM connections. As a result, CPA improves operating efficiency by 40 to 60 percent and reduces the number of touch points by 75 to 90 percent.

CPA provides greater flexibility and cost-effectiveness not only because it reduces the number of pieces of equipment on the network, the number of interfaces, back office systems, and touch points, but CPA also enables an end-to-end view for provisioning and network management, allowing for incremental services to be added and simplifying the amount of equipment at the customer premise.

Two additional CPA trials are scheduled for later this year as MCI introduces additional vendor equipment to the CPA architecture.

About MCI

MCI, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCIP) is a leading global communications provider, delivering innovative, cost-effective, advanced communications connectivity to businesses, governments and consumers. With the industry's most expansive global IP backbone, based on the number of company-owned points of presence, and wholly-owned data networks, MCI develops the converged communications products and services that are the foundation for commerce and communications in today's market. For more information, go to www.mci.com.

FLASHWAVE(R) is a trademark of Fujitsu Network Communications Inc. (USA). All rights reserved.

Source: Business Wire

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