Cable & Wireless ups latency SLAs in North America, Europe

LONDON - Cable & Wireless last week boosted service-level guarantees for its dedicated IP customers around the globe.

The ISP not only improved its latency guarantees, but also extended its network availability service-level agreement (SLA) to include customers' local loop connection.

While it can be confusing with ISPs one-upping one another every few months with latency, packet loss and network availability SLAs, these are important measuring sticks for customers, says Michael Suby, senior research analyst at Stratecast Partners.

C&W now guarantees that companies will not experience more than 50 msec of latency between sites in North America, putting the carrier ahead of its prime competitors (see graphic). Genuity, Sprint and WorldCom all guarantee customers will not experience more than 55 msec of latency between sites in North America.

C&W says it can offer customers improved guarantees because of its global network upgrades. "We're consistently looking at ways to improve network performance and pass that along to customers. Our OC-192 upgrades allow us to offer stronger guarantees at this time," says John McClosky, senior manager for Internet access.

The carrier has upgraded seven switching nodes with Juniper Networks' 160 routers that support OC-192 and Multi-protocol Label Switching technology for traffic engineering improvements. Those cities include New York; Washington, D.C.; London; Paris; Brussels, Belgium; Amsterdam; and Frankfurt, Germany. The carrier says it will upgrade five more nodes by the end of June.

The carrier also improved its SLA in Europe, which now guarantees customers will not experience more than 50 msec of latency between sites. But Sprint is still leading the market with its guarantee that customers will not experience more than 45 msec of latency between sites in Europe.

C&W also is offering customers performance guarantees between specific cities around the world. The ISP guarantees customers will not experience more than 100 msec of latency between New York and London; 110 msec of latency between Amsterdam and Washington, D.C.; and 180 msec of latency between Sydney, Australia, and San Francisco.

These guarantees are based on monthly averages. If the carrier misses its guarantees, customers are issued a three-day service credit on their next bill. Customers are required to apply for credits. To date, WorldCom is the only provider offering proactive credits.

"Latency is most important for customers that are using their IP network for time-sensitive applications such as [voice over IP]," Suby says. But most customers still use their IP connectivity for data traffic, which is why latency is really more of a benchmark for performance, he says.

"What is more interesting and noteworthy is the extension of [C&W's] network availability guarantee to include local loop access and its automatic SLA updates for all customers without requiring new contracts," Suby says.

The service provider guarantees uptime on a customer's local loop access when C&W orders that service. If a customer already has a local connection or prefers to order that link itself, then the local loop will not be covered by C&W's 100% network availability guarantee.

If a customer cannot reach C&W's network for more than 10 minutes, the customer will be credited with one day's worth of service.

C&W's new SLAs are available now to all customers. The carrier is offering customers a Web-based contract that lets them benefit from new SLAs without having to draw up a new printed contract. Most ISPs require users to work with their sales representatives if they want updated SLAs to apply to their contracts. C&W says customers just fill out a form online and updated SLAs automatically will apply.