XO Communications today announced a new wholesale service offering that will enable its ISP, international, wireless and other telecom customers to buy bandwidth at bulk rates and have it provisioned on-demand across XO’s national footprint.

XO National Hub service would enable an international carrier who wanted to serve multinational companies in the U.S. to buy DS-3s from Miami, for instance, and then provision DS-1s as needed throughout the XO fiber optic network, said Bart Pesavento, director of product management for XO Carrier Services. The wholesale customers can then establish hubs on a local, regional or national basis, reaching carrier hotels, Central Offices and end-user locations, and only paying for circuits when they are turned up.

“This enables them to turn up services more efficiently and more cost-effectively,” Pesavento said. “And it enables them to pay a predictable price – the long-haul portion would be a flat-rate price, and customer would just pay for the loop.”

Creating a service that delivers bandwidth-on-demand helps XO differentiate itself in a transport market that is largely commoditized, he added.

“We can compete a little bit less on price,” Pesavento said. “Transport is largely a commodity, but by giving the customer a little more flexibility in how they buy the service, we can differentiate on something besides price.”

The service can be used by international carriers to expand their reach, by wireless carriers to more efficiently backhaul traffic and by ISPS or telecom providers to aggregate traffic more efficiently as well, he said.