MEF Launches Service Operations Committee to Improve Ethernet Processes

Service Operations Committee to streamline buying, selling, delivering and operating Carrier Ethernet services 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif - Friday, May 24th 2013 [ME NewsWire]

(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The MEF has launched the Service Operations Committee (SOC), the organization’s first new committee in eight years, joining the existing technical, marketing and certification committees.

The purpose of the Service Operations Committee, which has widespread support from MEF members, is to “define, streamline and standardize processes for buying, selling, delivering and operating MEF-defined services”. Allan Langfield (Comcast) and Shahar Steiff (PCCW Global) have been appointed as committee co-chairs.

For service providers, this new committee means more consistent contracts and clarification of different providers’ capabilities, a standardized ordering process that takes into account national regulatory factors as well as the greater diversity of Ethernet services over those of TDM services. In addition, service providers will benefit from accelerated negotiation and deployment of services.

“Our internal survey concluded that two thirds of our members favor the new committee and its associated benefits,” said Ihab Tarazi, MEF chairman of the board and Verizon’s vice president of product technology. “Carrier Ethernet 2.0, and notably E-Access, have done a great deal to streamline the technical issues aligning wholesale carrier Ethernet services, and now it is time to bring the business processes into alignment. This is a significant development for the MEF and will require greater participation by higher level executives with operational roles in addition to the technical contributions from MEF members.”

The initial goal will be to increase the consistency of services available from providers and to reduce the number of service descriptions in contracts to simplify the purchasing process. The ordering process also will be simplified by greater global consistency among order field names and values. Service providers will benefit from the streamlined ordering process and reduced cost of providing the same information to different providers.

Wiki-based collaboration tools, online meetings and physical meetings will be used to encourage global participation in the working group.

“We have created this new team to explore how the MEF can facilitate the industry’s implementation of Ethernet,” said Nan Chen, president, MEF. “This is the MEF’s second major initiative this year in addition to the newly launched CloudEthernet Forum that addresses the specific challenges of pure Ethernet cloud delivery across large and geographically dispersed datacenters.”

About The MEF:

The MEF is a global industry alliance comprising more than 210 organizations including telecommunications service providers, cable MSOs, network equipment/software manufacturers, semiconductors vendors and testing organizations. The MEF’s mission is to accelerate the worldwide adoption of Carrier-class Ethernet networks and services. The MEF develops Carrier Ethernet technical specifications and implementation agreements to promote interoperability and deployment of Carrier Ethernet worldwide.

For more information about the Forum, including a complete listing of all current MEF members, please visit the MEF web site at http://www.MetroEthernetForum.org/

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