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AT&T last week pulled the covers off a new frame relay pricing plan designed to provide cost relief for users that build large, complex nets.
The carrier, which has long kept its frame relay pricing under wraps, published a plan that delivers lower permanent virtual circuit (PVC) prices in exchange for higher port charges. That will benefit companies that build large meshed nets by allowing them to add more PVCs to a given port at a lower cost, said Steve Sobolevitch, manager of business strategies for AT&T's InterSpan services.
AT&T also revamped private-line prices to provide savings for long-haul transmissions, while increasing costs for short-haul links (see story, this page).
While most carriers agree that user nets are largely star-topology configurations today, AT&T said a study it recently commissioned indicates that 86% of its InterSpan frame relay customers require a larger degree of meshed connectivity than they currently have.
Analysts said that's because AT&T previously loaded its prices on the PVC side of the equation, rather than the port side, discouraging some users from adding PVC connections among secondary and remote sites. Competitors MCI Communications Corp. and Sprint Corp....