British Telecommunications Plc has a new Frame Relay service aimed at UK companies that need to interconnect up to 40 sites. The service, aimed at data customers with more than five sites, is available with or without a managed router, at line speeds of up to 2Mbps, while the Committed Information Rate can be configured to run at up to 200% of the access circuit speed. The company says the access circuit from customer premises to the core British Telecom Frame Relay network will offer 99.9% availability; the core network itself should have 99.95% availability. As part of the service, British Telecom procures, installs, configures and manages the network and routers, which it is buying in from Cisco Systems Inc. According to the company, the new service varies from its existing Frame Relay offerings in one major way: To date, what we’ve done is provide Frame Relay services on a very bespoke basis, the company explains. Effectively, what we’ve done is standardize, smooth delivery, and take out some of the customized services. The company is not releasing detailed pricing information, but says that it will offer a standardized pricing structure for the new service.
