Covad Communications, which has been testing their Ethernet service, announced today the launch date for nationwide Ethernet services - namely April 15th (aka Tax Day, "Pay the Man Day", etc). I almost went with Covad's solution when TMC moved to our new headquarters, but decided to go with Optimum Lightpath instead ($2500/month for bundled 45Mbps data + voice). In any event, according to Patrick Bennett, President and CEO of Covad, "What will differentiate this product in the market are the integrated QoS and CoS options that give our partners immense flexibility in optimizing network performance based on their application requirements."Covad designed these services to run business-class, real-time applications like Voice over IP, video, gaming, VPNs and video conferencing through multiple traffic-handling options via Quality of Service (QoS) and Class of Service (CoS), and are backed by Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
"Ethernet is an important component of Covad's overall portfolio strategy. What will differentiate this product in the market are the integrated QoS and CoS options that give our partners immense flexibility in optimizing network performance based on their application requirements," said Patrick Bennett, president and chief executive officer at Covad.
"Covad Ethernet extends the availability of higher-bandwidth products while also offering new, even more cost-effective Ethernet services at the lower end of the broadband speed curve. Our new services have been purpose-built to support revenue-generating, value-added services such as VoIP, video conferencing, VPN and software as a service."
Covad's Ethernet service will be available beginning April 15 at speeds from 1.5 Mbps to 35 Mbps out of more than 4,000 COs reaching approximately 10 million businesses nationwide.
