C&W getting ISP act together

By Denise Pappalardo
Network World, 09/13/99

VIENNA, VA. - Cable & Wireless USA, the second-largest ISP in the U.S., is finally starting to act the part.

The company has been wrangling with one problem after another since exploding onto the Internet service scene a year ago with its acquisition of MCI's Internet business for $1.75 billion. The latest brouhaha involves upset customers whose service was shut off a month ago and has not been restored.

But company officials last week outlined for Network World an aggressive plan to turn things around. The plan includes:

$3 billion worldwide network upgrade spread over three years based on ATM and optical gear from the likes of FORE (now part of GEC), Juniper Networks and Ciena.
The company's first IP virtual private network (VPN) service.
A managed firewall offering.
New application service provider and Web-hosting efforts.
An integrated billing system that will let customers receive one bill for using voice, data and Internet services.

Customers say it appears that Cable & Wireless is getting its Internet services act together. "Our Internet link is always nailed up and customer service is much better than it was with MCI," says one customer who was transferred from MCI to Cable & Wireless after the two carriers struck their deal. Early on, it was taking Cable & Wireless months to fill upgrade orders, says the customer, who requested anonymity.

But it's been a long 12 months since MCI sold its Internet business to Cable & Wireless as part of MCI and WorldCom's agreement with the government to approve their merger. The government frowned on the union of MCI's big Internet network with WorldCom's UUNET backbone, the biggest Internet service backbone in the market.

The 'Net business buyout hasn't gone nearly as smoothly as Cable & Wireless would have hoped. In March, the company filed a lawsuit against MCI WorldCom that claims the carrier did not send enough employees to Cable & Wireless to support the Internet business.

The strained relationship between MCI WorldCom and Cable & Wireless also appears to be at the heart of the carriers' latest ordeal - a service cutoff for more than 70 business customers, according to sources.

Under an agreement between the carriers, Cable & Wireless in June was permitted to terminate certain MCI WorldCom frame relay customers' access to Cable & Wireless' Internet backbone. Cable & Wireless agreed to extend that deadline to give MCI WorldCom more time to transition these customers to the UUNET backbone. But after a three-month extension, Cable & Wireless last month turned off its gateways and some MCI WorldCom customers have yet to regain Internet access.

"We were never notified about the termination, and we were never even notified that another company was managing our Internet traffic," says Bob Finch, network manager at Utilities Service Alliance in Overland Park, Kan. The company, which was still without Internet access as of press time, is now shopping for a new ISP.

Cable & Wireless says it did not turn off any frame relay permanent virtual circuit (PVC) connections without permission from MCI WorldCom. MCI WorldCom claims it sent letters in February and March to all its frame relay customers that had dedicated PVCs to Cable & Wireless' Internet network, notifying them of the change. Account teams also made direct contact with customers, the companies say.

Cable & Wireless is looking to put its problems behind it by upgrading its network and rolling out new services.

In April, Cable & Wireless announced plans to spend $670 million on its domestic IP network this year. That money is going toward buying new FORE ASX 4000 ATM switches, Juniper Networks M40 routers and Ciena dense wave division multiplexing fiber-optic transport equipment.

At NetWorld+Interop '99 Atlanta this week, the service provider will announce that the East Coast portion of its Internet backbone now runs at OC-48 speeds, up from OC-12 in most parts of the network. By early 2000, the company's entire network will be kicked up to OC-48, and in 2001, network capacity will skyrocket to OC-192, says Arthur Medici, a senior vice president at the company. The higher-bandwidth backbone should let Cable & Wireless support more customers and offer them faster Internet access links.

The company is also in the process of building new dial-up Internet access facilities and replacing 3Com/U.S. Robotics gear with Cisco equipment, says Jeffrey Young, chief engineer for Cable & Wireless' Internet solutions division. Cable & Wireless plans to deploy Cisco AS5300 and AS5800 routers that support voice, fax and dial-up traffic. This gear will support new services that the company plans to roll out over the next eight to 10 months, Young says.

Among the most anticipated new services will be the company's first IP VPN offering, which Medici says will be announced by the end of this month. The service will support the IETF's IP Security encryption and authentication specification, he says.

Many of Cable & Wireless' competitors are already offering second-generation VPN services. o