[asterisk-users] Becoming a CLEC

[Alex Balashov]

On 11/16/2011 10:30 AM, eherr wrote:

> But what is the correct physical setup of a CLEC.

There is no "correct" physical setup.  The setups vary as much as 
anything else does, and are shaped mainly by the purpose of the CLEC 
and the range of products it provides.

> Do you get rack space at a carrier hotel and equipment in there?

CLECs that provide a substantial range of business-class voice and 
data services usually have quite a bit of equipment and either end up 
building out their own telco-grade data center somewhere (which can be 
synergistic for many of them since they are also data center operators 
in general), or renting a cage in a carrier hotel.

There are CLECs whose equipment can functionally fit into a single 
rack, or even less, but those are the specialised, single-track ones 
that mainly exist to support the back side of some VoIP product.  In 
cases where only one or two racks are involved, a carrier hotel is 
indeed a common venue.

> Do you get rack space at the local ILEC CO?; which is Verizon
> here.

Yes, but _only_ for the purpose of colocating equipment that is 
related to backhaul and CFA, i.e. to providing services out of that CO 
and dragging the last-mile loops to the customer out of the CO and 
onto your private network.

A CO and the equipment allowed it is a very restrictive and regulated 
environment full of equipment certification criteria and obscure 
rules.  It will seem especially restrictive if you're used to working 
with commodity PC hardware and open-source;  virtually nothing of the 
sort is allowed to be colocated in a CO.

Also, keep in mind that COs generally have 23" telco racks (not 19" 
data racks) and supply -48V DC, or, at best, 220V AC.

Space in a busy metro CO is very expensive.  You really don't want to 
think of it as a general-purpose colocation facility.  That's not what 
it's for.

> What are the types of voice platforms used by CLECs?

The answer to that varies a great deal depending on the services being 
provided.  But in general, CLECs use converged softswitches that offer 
them the combination of 1) TDM facilities and Class 4 routing features 
they need, along with (obviously) SS7 support and support for more 
obscure protocols that become very important in CLEC land, such as 
H.248/MEGACO, MGCP, etc. and 2) Class 5 subscriber features and 
applications so they can sell business lines, hosted PBX, etc.

CLECs generally are looking for all of that in one chassis, with the 
obvious redundancy implications as well.  They want something that 
they can connect to the ILEC tandems while simultaneously supporting 
constructs as high-level as voicemail or "find-me-follow-me".

Common platforms in the wild:

- MetaSwitch (Class 4/5)
- Sonus (rather Class 4 and IP-oriented)
- Lucent Compact Switch - formerly Telica (quite Class 4)
- Taqua
- Excel
- Tekelec

Broadsoft and Cisco BTS (not so much anymore) figures every heavily 
into this, but they're slightly different animals than the rest.

That's just the formulaic stuff.  The big CLECs have all sorts of 
custom stuff, such as Level3's famed Lucent TNT Max-based "Viper" 
network and corresponding media gateway control/signaling gateways.

-- Alex

-- 
Alex Balashov - Principal
Evariste Systems LLC
260 Peachtree Street NW
Suite 2200
Atlanta, GA 30303
Tel: +1-678-954-0670
Fax: +1-404-961-1892
Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/