AT&T today announced a new optical service that delivers bandwidth-on-demand, enabling customers to use AT&T’s self-service portal to administer their Sonet networks.

The AT&T’s Optical Mesh Service uses the AT&T BusinessDirect customer portal and pre-engineered network capacity to let customers turn up and turn down the bandwidth they use and pay for to pre-designated locations on AT&T’s optical network at rates up to OC-48, or 2. 4 Gb/s.

“It’s a cool idea,” said Brian Washburn, analyst with Current Analysis. “It is an interesting differentiator. I don’t believe it’s a fully automated approach to doing this, so it’s not the most elegant, but it gets the job done.”

To enable the customer control, AT&T pre-engineers its network to make the bandwidth available to locations designated by customers. That would allow a business to turn up bandwidth for periodic data backups or to handle seasonal traffic, and turn down that bandwidth to avoid paying for it at other times.

“This new service puts the power and reach of the AT&T network directly into the hands of customers, enabling unprecedented control over how they choose to route network traffic and increase or decrease the amount of bandwidth needed at any time,” said Sandy Brown, vice president, Business Services, AT&T, in a prepared statement. “We’ve designed this service with all of our business customers in mind — from retailers that require more bandwidth as they gear up for the holiday shopping season to manufacturers and other industry players that rely on flexible networks to respond instantly to changing business needs.”

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