NGA005/12 Early market deployment launch of Multicast for GEA

06/03/2012    For Information

This briefing is for GEA Communications Providers

This briefing confirms Openreach plans for the early market deployment launch of the product feature 'Multicast for GEA' from 1 April 2012 and the associated price involved.

Openreach is pleased to announce that we are moving to early market deployment launch for our Multicast for Generic Ethernet Access (GEA) product feature with effect from 1 April 2012.

The product is purchased at a Layer 2 Switch (L2S) level, with a one-off connection cost of £1,200, an annual rental of £10 per 5mb per L2S (the VLAN is currently available up to 300mb) and modification price of £10 per L2S. There is a three year contract associated with this, during which modifications can only be made upwards.

For further details on pricing, please visit section 5.3.2 on the price list.

Product overview
Multicasting at its simplest is the capability to transmit one stream of data and that data stream only gets split into individual streams nearer to the end user’s site. Examples of use include broadcast TV, streaming of data such as race results or share prices or for pre-downloads such as media/software/firmware updates.

Multicasting avoids having to send multiple individual streams through most of the network. This has the benefit of reducing the required bandwidth in a CP s network enabling a reduction in the associated backhaul cost. This will become more relevant going forward as data volume increases and where multicast can help to restrict network development costs.

Multicast for GEA is a dynamic point to multipoint network layer enabling users to subscribe to IP data streams served by their provider.  The CP provider requires a Multicast VLAN, which is a GEA product option, to benefit from this facility.

The key features are:

• Multicast is a feature of the GEA Data products. This service will be provided alongside GEA-FTTP Data or GEA-FTTC Data services, with service being delivered over the same End User Ethernet data port as the Data service.
• Multicast would be made available within the GEA footprint and handover locations.
• GEA Cablelink is required to be in place with full backhaul connectivity to your network
• Openreach would provide multicast VLAN at each enabled L2S that will serve both FTTC and FTTP fed from that L2S.
• Your GEA-FTTP Data and GEA-FTTC Data services will automatically be enabled for multicast where you have ordered a Multicast VLAN on the same L2S.
• The standard lead time for the provision of a Multicast VLAN is 20 working days.
• The Multicast VLANs will be provided in fixed 5Mbit/s increments starting from 0Mbit/s up to 200Mbit/s then in 10Mbit/s increments with an upper limit of 300Mbit/s.

To take part, customers need to be a registered CP, with backhaul connectivity to a GEA Cablelink in the relevant geographic area.

For further details of Multicast for GEA please contact your Sales and Relationship Manager.

Pricing detail is available at the pricing section of the website.

BS

The contents of this briefing are accurate at the time of writing and are subject to change.

If you wish to discuss the information contained within this brief, please contact your Sales and Relationship Manager.

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