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mammoth networks fills middle-mile need

Mammoth Networks continues to develop their network to support data products in the middle-mile, a niche the company has carved that fills the gap between rural and Metro telecommunications. The company has embraced the market for data transport to remote locations within their coverage area from dense telecom markets such as Denver and Seattle.

With their roots in rural telecommunications, Mammoth has recognized that developing technologies in data and Internet Protocol (IP) transport are initially focused on Metro markets, relegating rural areas to traditional services. While other companies are focusing their efforts on Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Metro Ethernet, Mammoth has been tailoring their products to enable their customers to push services to far-flung areas within their eleven state coverage area.

"In telecom, there is a precedence of quoting out how many millions of Internet users are within a coverage area," says Brian Worthen, who heads up product development for Mammoth. "What they don't say is that those numbers are based on a 50 mile radius of metro areas."

Worthen explained that their customers, whom he terms Partners, can provision traditional T1, ATM, and Frame Relay services in some of the most remote areas of their network. Partners can then transition their traffic into newer technologies such as MPLS and IP at Mammoth's core locations in Billings, Denver, Phoenix, and Seattle.

An example of this is a Mammoth Partner located in a small town serviced by a rural Local Exchange Carrier (LEC). With Mammoth's network, the Partner can pull a T1 from the small LEC into a nearby Frame or ATM switch. Traffic from the T1 is then converted to ATM, which can be delivered and transitioned at a core location to an MPLS or IP network.

"Mammoth allows our Partners to take a product to an End User in a town of 5,000, and carry that traffic back to a more advanced network," says Worthen. "We're bridging the middle-mile gap."

Mammoth touts itself as transport-agnostic. The company prides itself on its ability to accept multiple types of traffic into its network, and is ensuring ongoing support for those products. The company is in the process of upgrading their network core to directly support integration between MPLS networks and provide additional IP routing features. Mammoth has slotted mid-2007 to push out those features to various nodes throughout their network.

Mammoth Networks is an aggregator of data services serving eleven Western states. Mammoth enables its Partners by erasing the invisible lines of the telecommunications structure, and leveling the playing field for Internet Service Providers. The privately-held company is based in Gillette, Wyoming.

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