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Service Provider | Market % |
AT&T | 28% |
Sprint | 22% |
MCI | 18% |
Worldcom/MFS | 13% |
U.S. West | 4% |
Pacific Bell | 3% |
Ameritech | 2% |
Others | 10% |
Table 8-3. Who gets the ATM pie?
Table 8-4 lists the 1997 ATM service revenues by industry. Not too surprisingly, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are the users into ATM with the biggest bang. It is easy to imagine the huge amount of data shipped around the country each day by the ISPs.
Industry | % Revenue |
ISPs | 41% |
Government | 32% |
High Tech | 16% |
Manufacturing | 4% |
Retail | 3% |
Entertainment | 2% |
Utilities | 1% |
Insurance | 1% |
Table 8-4. Who bakes the ATM pie?
Perhaps not too surprising either are government and high tech providing the second and third, respectively, sources of ATM revenue. While providing a paltry 2 percent of ATM revenue in 1997, expect entertainment to catch up and surpass all other categories by 2000.
Table 8-5 lists the percentage of all ATM ports by industry. While ISPs outpace the government in the revenue source category, as shown in Table 8-4, government has more ports than ISPs. Guess it does pay to have prospective suppliers bid the job.
Industry | % of Ports |
Government | 37% |
ISPs | 28% |
High Tech | 21% |
Manufacturing | 6% |
Retail | 5% |
Entertainment | 1% |
Utilities | 1% |
Durance | 1% |
Table 8-5. ATM users
From the information gleaned from service providers, it appears that if competitive bids are sought, service providers will respond with better pricing. Let them know you are asking them to competitively price their offering. They will sharpen their pencil a little more. Ask for their preferred discount rate. Never, never, never pay the first asking price. Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate.
Port Type | % Revenue |
T1/DS-1 | 60% |
NxDS-1 | 34% |
DS-3 | 5% |
OC-3 | 1% |
Table 8-6. Where ATM revenue comes from
Table 8-6 lists the most popular ATM ports. One might conclude from Tables 8-4 and 8-5 that ISPs and government prefer DS-1 ports. Someone certainly prefers them. Table 8-6 reflects the current ATM service traffic profile. Most of the ATM traffic is data traffic. As entertainment moves up the list of ATM revenue sources, expect the predominant port type to move toward DS-3, as more bandwidth is required for video and multimedia than is required for ASCII character and binary based data files.
Some ATM service providers are entering the managed network services market. Service providers figure they are the network experts since they have recently installed two extensive networks, Frame Relay and ATM, and have suffered the pain and agony of learning the ropes. They are keen to share the knowledge gained, for a handsome profit, of course. However, their solution to managed services is to contract the work out to multiple third parties and mark up the service accordingly. Buyer beware! Often, the subcontractor is held accountable by the service provider for installation, maintenance, service, training, network monitoring, and reporting only by the casual business relationship between third-party vendors and the service provider. However, contracting directly with a full service ATM managed services provider can guarantee the users needs are met at a lower cost.
ATM traffic patterns are of concern to cost sensitive network managers. If the application is not sensitive to the time of day, then knowing when the ATM backbones are most lightly loaded can save some big bucks. With service providers offering liberal port oversubscription terms the clever network manager can reduce the size of PVCs dramatically if data transmission occurs during the right time of day and in the right direction.
Service provider networks are more heavily loaded with traffic going from the West Coast to the East Coast. Possible reasons include the number of financial centers in Chicago and New York, the number of corporate headquarters in New York, and the amount of government bureaucracies in Washington, D.C. Notice the biggest single user of ATM ports identified in Table 8-5 is Uncle Sam and Aunt Sarah. ISP, a close second to big government, is composed of many Internet Service Providers with the majority of ISPs located in the eastern regions. Traffic from Asia/Pacific enters western gateways and transits from west to east. Adding to the amount of traffic bound for eastern ports (no pun intended) are the Canadian gateways located in eastern regions. So, it seems reasonable that more traffic would flow from west to east.
ATM traffic peaks about 8 p.m. and begins to fall off rapidly after midnight until about 6 a.m. when it begins to pick up again. Monday is the busiest day of the week for ATM networks which seems reasonable as remote sites transmit weekend reports, data, etc., into corporate headquarters on Monday morning. Friday afternoons are also a busy time as financial markets are abuzz with closing market information. Avoid Monday morning and Friday afternoon, and transmit the bulk of your data between midnight and 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and you can cut your port sizes in half. A significant cost reduction, indeed.
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