By contrast, traditional phone companies take 30 to 60 days to be able to increase bandwidth. Representatives from phone companies SBC Communications and Qwest, which recently merged with USWest, could not be reached for comment. But a Verizon spokesman said the company is not surprised that new competition is cropping up. We are focused on increasing capacity and flexibility of our networks. Analysts say Yipes and Telseon are the two biggest players in the market to provide Ethernet-based Net connections to businesses, and they expect a healthy dose of new competitors, such as Cogent Communications, to enter the emerging market.
Customers range from universities to law firms, the companies say.
Yipes offers service in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C, and it launched its service in San Diego yesterday. The San Francisco-based company hopes to expand to 58 cities in the next few years. Yipes and Telseon have different business models, however. Yipes is focused on offering Net services directly to businesses, but it also caters to service providers that use Yipes' network to offer Ethernet-based connections. Co-location firms build facilities that serve as neutral places for service providers and Web hosting firms to locate their servers and equipment.