RE: Anyone familiar with the SBC product lingo?

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1

Thanks all who replied. Since we have an OC-3 currently I went down the
hall and pulled out the actual bill. I was even more confused when I
looked at the bill. The situation is as follows...

We have 4 DS3s and an OC3 which SBC provides to us via a Nortel mux that
they placed on our premise. The OC3 we have now is hooked up to their
ATM network to connect up some other high speed sites. On the actual
bill for that OC3 it shows a charge for $2200, no more, no less. The
service described is "SONET Circuit Service OC3" which I find very
puzzling since we don't interface with SBC using SONET. Someone
explained this weirdness as "you pay for the OC-3 that is provisioned
through their SONET infrastructure of which the premise mux is the last
stop". OK fine.

So to continue with my current puzzlement, what types of USOCs should I
expect to be quoted when provisioning an OC3 for voice? Basted on Matts
recommendation it would seem that I need a regular old OC3.
Additionally I would expect to see some misc tax and surcharge items;
probably some sort of E911 charge as well. Anything else I am missing
or do I just tell them that I want the transport plugged into the PSTN
and give them the phone numbers that I want to ride on that circuit?

Thanks all,
Dan

2

US terminology tends to be sloppy about using terms like "OC3" when the
more precise description is "an STS3c data path on an OC3 hardware interface".
You've probably got an OC12 SONET ring out the back of the mux with an
STS3c data path for your "OC3" and a few STS1 data paths carrying your DS3s.
(It might just be a straight-line instead of a ring, though.)
On the front of the mux, you've probably got copper coax jacks for the DS3s, and
you've *probably* got a fiber running OC3 SONET to your ATM router or
whatever "OC3" device you're using, though it could actually be
something silly with copper
or (even less likely) SDH instead of SONET.

So what they probably mean is that you're paying for an STS3c access circuit
over some kind of SONET-based access, and you're also paying for an ATM service
that uses that STS3c circuit to get to your router, and you're also
paying for some PVCs.