Alpheus Communications has introduced flat-rate pricing for its carrier wavelength service line for its 13,000 on-net and near-net building locations, enabling it to more rapidly respond to carrier customers' 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps speed requests.
The service provider designed the new pricing to address carrier and business customers' desire for high-bandwidth connections for their offices, operating locations and data center sites.
One of the key attributes of the flat-rate pricing is that it takes the guesswork out of the customer’s hands. Wavelength services with flat-rate predetermined pricing gives carrier customers predictable pricing for high-capacity network services connect customer locations.
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Carriers can also update pricing tools for within their organization, which leads to quick generation of quotes for their customers. This is unlike traditional wavelength services where pricing is developed on a case-by-case basis because construction costs vary by location. As Alpheus continues to invest in constructing last-mile fiber to more locations, the expanded fiber network makes it possible to offer flat-rate wavelength services to buildings on its fiber routes.
Scott Widham, CEO of Alpheus, told FierceTelecom that the motivation to introduce the new pricing scheme was driven by its customers who wanted to get access to services quickly.
“The way we traditionally had done it is our customers had given the locations and we go back to our business development department to bring development and it took time,” Widham said. “The Carriers said we need to speed that up.”
Alpheus has been aggressively building out its own fiber network in recent years, helping it get to this point.
“We have a lot more fiber now because we have been actively building backbone for three years so now we’re in front of 13,000 buildings and we have gone to fixed rate pricing,” Widham said. “If you want 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps, we’ll give you guaranteed pricing immediately.”
Widham added that the flat rate concept is “is not a perfect science because costs may be higher or lower than you expect, but in terms of being responsive to the market, which is offering higher bandwidth, it is the right way to go and gives us a competitive edge.”
The majority of the locations the service is available to is mainly in traditional multi-dwelling unit (MDU) buildings where businesses reside. It has also built out to the majority of the major data centers in the Texas' DASH (Dallas-Austin-San Antonio-Houston) market.
“Out of the 13,000 buildings, 12,950 are commercial buildings,” Widham. “We have done a good job at building to all of the retail data centers because it’s the gift that keeps giving once you’re in there with fiber.”