On-net VPN Availability Shows Room for Improvement

According to data from TeleGeography’s Global Enterprise Networks research service, there is a significant difference between where carriers offer international wide-area network (WAN) services, and where they are actually able to offer such services over their own networks (“on-net”). TeleGeography’s survey of 73 enterprise data service providers sheds light on the vital role that partnerships and network-to-network interfaces (NNI) with other carriers have played in expanding telcos’ international presence.

IP VPN is by far the most widely available international enterprise network service. Because of its relative maturity, it is also the service that carriers most frequently offer through a partnership or NNI. Carriers surveyed by TeleGeography offer on-net IP VPN service 41 percent of the time across the 166 cities in the study. Meanwhile, carriers offer Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) on-net 53 percent of the time, SDH/SONET and VPLS on-net 46 percent of the time, and EoMPLS on-net 48 percent of the time.

Service providers are far more likely to offer enterprise WAN services on-net in developed markets than in developing countries. Carriers surveyed by TeleGeography offer IP VPN service on-net 50 percent of the time in the cities surveyed in the U.S. & Canada, and 44 percent of the time in the European cities studied. In contrast, developing markets such as those in Africa and Latin America are much more likely to be served through a partnership or NNI. Carriers can offer VPN on-net 28 percent of the time in Latin America, and only 19 percent of the time in Africa.

Availability of On-Net vs. Off-Net VPN Service in Select Cities, Q3 2011

Source: TeleGeography

While many service providers have established international NNIs and partnerships, corporate customers with strict security and technological needs may prefer carriers that are able to provide WAN service on-net. Although carriers may be able to use NNIs to offer seamless service in many locations, delivering service off-net can affect service level agreements (SLAs), responses to outages, and mean time to repair.

TeleGeography’s Global Enterprise Networks research service details the international enterprise network services offered by 73 service providers and analyzes trends in service availability and pricing. Service offerings covered include:

• MPLS IP VPN
• Ethernet
• Dedicated Internet Access
• Private line