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Power Company Branches Into Network Services May 1, 2000 By Kelly Jackson Higgins It was one of the first public power utilities to push more than electricity over its power-grid infrastructure, opting to build its own carrier-grade network rather than merely leasing the dark fiber to businesses and carriers. Now Tacoma Power, through its Click! Network division, offers data-transport services for businesses and carriers and cable-modem services for multiple ISPs. That is in addition to the cable TV service it launched two years ago. "We are really a transport company capitalizing on the fiber optic infrastructure," says Terry Dillon, broadband services manager for Click! Network-Tacoma Power, Tacoma, Wash. As a public utility, however, Tacoma Power had to strike a delicate balance between launching a new telecommunications business and keeping the doors open for competition. "The local policy makers wanted us to compete but [only] as long as other businesses could grow in the community," Dillon says. That meant leaving room for network integrators, consultants and CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) too. So Click! Network focused on offering a transport network service, leaving the value-added services to the ASPs and ISPs. A Sonet-based fiber infrastructure was built to provide transport for private-line circuits, site-to-site over its dual, OC-48 ring architecture. Tacoma Power picked Sonet instead of a packet-based technology because it wanted to mimic the predictability and reliability of the traditional time-division multiplexed carrier network. "ATM has some good QoS [Quality of Service] features, but we couldn't have ensured the same reliability as with Sonet," Dillon says. "We knew exactly what we were getting when we purchased Sonet - it fit our business model." The company has tested but not yet needed to use the backup-ring feature of the Sonet backbone, Dillon says. The fiber network infrastructure also eventually will run real-time metering and load management for its power offerings. Among Click! Network's key broadband business offerings are the cable modem platform and a metropolitan-area-network-type Ethernet LAN transport service. The provider also has business agreements with two CLECs in Tacoma that handle its business customers' out-of-town traffic. Dillon says Click! Network is looking at other service options, such as offering its service-provider partners a platform for voice using its cable and Sonet infrastructure, as well as VPNs (virtual private networks) for its business customers.
It's unclear just how much the utility-based Click! Network-Tacoma Power will
usurp some of the local services offered by U S West, but if its inroads in the
Tacoma-area cable market are any indication, it could take a bite out of U S
West's stronghold there: Click! has 13,000 cable customers in the area now.
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