I sat through a 65 slide presentation from Level3 about the integration of Global Crossing. The stats are nice for trivia night. Maybe someday CVX will hold a Telecom Jeopardy so I can use this trivia to win prizes.

• Level3 holds the original VoIP patent.
• Technical Emmy for "Outstanding Achievement in Technical/Engineering Development.
• Global Crossing (GC) was one of the first sub-sea cable operators.
• GC was the first to market IP-VPN back in 2001.
• GC was the 1st carrier to deploy global MPLS network in 2001.
• GC has 140 SONUS VoIP switches throughout global VoIP backbone
• First global provider with IPv6 natively deployed. (I thought it was NTT)
• 100,000 inter-city miles of fiber.
• 700 cities in 70 countries.
• Approx. 170 metro networks.
• 344 IP-VPN core routers.
• 99.99% SLA.
• L3 can LNP 86% of the NPA-NXX in the US.
• Certified Microsoft Lync Nomadic E-911 Partner.
• They left off: direct connect to Amazon AWS.

Level3 is THE Internet backbone. The GC ASN (AS3549) is going away. The GC network will be used for IP-VPN and MPLS and the L3 network (AS3356) for Internet.

The second half of the presentation was about the GC-L3 Conferencing options. Level3 has an extensive catalog for conferencing options, including Event services (like for earnings calls for public companies); web meeting; video center; webcasting and streaming. Webex and on24 are partners. There is a buy rate - and it looks very good. A lot of the conferencing is a result of Level3's vast VoIP network, CDN system, WAN optimization service, and video streaming operations. When you combine all that running an audio bridge for an earnings call or a video conference is simple.

Level3 uses the term IP-VPN and MPLS inter-changeably. It was confusing for me since VPN and MPLS are not the same technology. Oh, well, what's in a name. "IPVPN is the marketing name for MPLS."

I do have clients on Level3 experiencing network issues. Every integration that L3 goes through, they mess with the network while they shut down routes and routers to consolidate. This issue is giving Cogent a chance to take market share, while also opening up opportunities for other carriers like InterNAP and AS3561. It would be a great time for Sprint to flex its IP Network muscles, but all's wireless on the AS1239 front.

L3 has put in place Partner Integration Specialists to aid Agents in interfacing with the correct quoting tool, product people, and the like. Take advantage peopel! I would also say jump on the webinars to learn about the new offerings that can get you into bigger accounts. Smart WAN and website optimization are not for SMB.

L3 offers a direct connection to Amazon AWS for clients. Now, L3 offers SIP Trunking for Microsoft Lync: "As Microsoft® Lync® continues to gain market share in the unified communications (UC) space, we are seeing strong funnel growth and implementations around Microsoft Lync-based deployments in both our direct and indirect sales channels. Level 3 views this as a lucrative sales opportunity for our agents." Think Enterprise clients. According to this study, UC interest is in the Enterprise space.