Stop The Presses: ION's On!

Communications Today, July 20, 2000

Sprint's [FON] Integrated On-Demand network is getting larger. The #3 long-distance carrier yesterday expanded ION consumer services to Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, Calif., and Phoenix.

ION is as much a marketing strategy as a network. It gives residential and small-business users combined local voice, data and fax services over DSL, bundled with long-distance minutes.

The consumer service rolled out this week includes four voice lines, DSL, local service and 750 minutes of long distance for $159 a month.

Sprint markets DSL with up to 8 Mbps download speeds, for those close to central offices.

For enterprise users, Sprint slaps the ION name on high-capacity lines and offers different pricing. Residential and business traffic alike is carried on Sprint's ATM backbone. Internet protocol and other data traffic is encapsulated and moved as ATM.

"ION is a couple of different things," Sprint spokesman Steve Lunceford told us. "We're using it as a product name, but it's also the back end of our network."

That network ends at the customer's premises, where Sprint installs a hub that uses Cisco Systems [CSCO] technology. The hub splits data and voice traffic and distributes it to the appropriate phones and computers.

Sprint took some heat in the press over ION. After announcing the service in 1998, the carrier went silent on the subject through most of last year. Articles popping up in trade journals labeled ION vaporware and marketroid gibberish.

This year, however, Sprint has rolled out the service in Austin, Dallas, Denver, Ft. Worth, Kansas City and Seattle, as well as the cities reached yesterday. And much more is in store, Lunceford said. "You'll see our DSLAM build-out reach 20 to 25 total markets by year's end," he said. "That'll be a pass-by of about 23 million homes."

After quietly dissing ION, AT&T [T] and MCI WorldCom [T] have followed in its footsteps. Both of the other Big 3 carriers are rolling out ION-like integrated services.

Paul Coe Clark III