The Background on Equant

Equant is a service provider, part of the France Telecom Group, with a network reaching into 220 countries and territories. Equant has the local support of its 9500 employees in approximately 165 countries and manages more than 152,000 user connections across the world. In using Equant as a case study example, we are not trying to promote a specific company or product, but rather to use the SP case study as a model that can represent other SPs.

Building on extensive experience in data communications, Equant serves more than 3700 large businesses. At the 2003 World Communication Awards, it was named Best Global Carrier and its IP VPN was named Best Managed Service.

Equant has the industry's most extensive portfolio of communications services and network solutions, including the market-leading IP VPN used by more than 1300 multinationals today. Equant was one of the early adopters of MPLS technology, with its deployment commencing in 1999. It has been a leader in developing and deploying new services based on MPLS.

Equant Business Drivers

Economies of scale have been a key driver for Equant to deploy an MPLS-based networkthat is, the capability to offer multiple services over a converged IP/MPLS backbone.

Equant Services

Equant's portfolio includes VPN services, voice and video services, mobility services, managed services (including security and IT services such as server management and messages), integration services, and professional services. Equant has more than 1300 companies across the globe that subscribe to its managed IP VPN service. Convergence is clearly one of the main reasons MPLS IP VPNs are revolutionizing the telecommunications landscape. During 2003, Equant witnessed a shift from an "early adopter" to a "mainstream" attitude by major multinational corporations (MNC). No longer are Fortune 2000 global firms opting for converged voice and data networks simply to future-proof themselves for the technologies and applications on the horizon. Rather, they are seeing the move as crucial to their ability to compete and meet their bottom line numbers.

The economic case for converged voice and data has become so strong that most big companies cannot afford the luxury of waiting. When more than a few international sites are involved, convergence can dramatically lower their total cost of ownership (TCO)that is, their overall costs factoring in investment. An Equant customer based in Georgia, for instance, recently replaced its separate voice and data networks with a single converged MPLS-based IP VPN network and is now saving $29,000 per month just on voice calls between its Brazilian sites and its U.S. headquarters.

Just as important is the fact that the quality of VoIP calls on an MPLS-based IP VPN network is now as good as the quality of those on the public switched telecommunications networks (PSTN) in developed countriesand it is actually better than PSTN calls in many developing countries. In addition, the any-to-any capabilities of MPLS IP VPNs allow companies to easily add or remove sites from their networks without dealing with the cost and complexity of reconfiguring routing tables. Because of these compelling factors, most multinational corporations are not debating whether to migrate to a converged MPLS-based IP VPN, but rather, when to migrate.

Here is a case study of Equant and one of its customer.