international private leased circuit (IPLC)

What is an international private leased circuit (IPLC)?

An international private leased circuit (IPLC) is a point-to-point private line used by an organization to communicate between offices that are dispersed throughout the world. An IPLC can be used for internet access, data exchange, video conferencing and other forms of communications.

An IPLC provides an international organization with a private connection for carrying out digital communications across locations.

An IPLC makes it possible to exchange confidential, time-sensitive data between endpoints on a continuous basis, while avoiding many of the challenges that come with public networks, such as delayed responses, unexpected downtimes or additional security risks. An IPLC offers organizations continuous bandwidth that is both private and secure, providing end-to-end connectivity for conducting mission-critical business.

To acquire IPLC services, an organization contracts with an international carrier that offers dedicated leased lines for exchanging data across geographically dispersed locations. The carrier might rely on undersea cables, landline cable systems or satellite connections to support communications across international routes. Because the carrier uses dedicated circuits, the organization can securely transmit and receive large volumes of data at high speeds without the type of traffic congestion that typifies public networks.

In the early days of international communications, an organization had to contact each carrier in each country to set up the necessary services, which increased complexity and required separate billing. This led to the introduction of One-Stop Shopping (OSS), which enables an organization to place a single order with a single carrier for multiple private leased circuits for offices in different countries.

OSS consolidates the billing for those circuits into a single invoice. It handles all currency issues and enables the organization to report all problems from any circuit to one carrier.

What features does an IPLC include?

The features included with an IPLC are driven in good part by the carrier providing the services; however, most carriers offer the following features at a minimum:

• guaranteed bandwidth and high-speed data delivery, with consistent availability, reliability and performance;
• fully managed and supported infrastructure that enables organizations to transmit data, voice, video and internet to and from nearly any place in the world;
• private, dedicated line free from the bandwidth, contention and privacy issues that come with public networks;
• support for multiple circuit speeds and bandwidth capacities to meet changing workload requirements;
• OSS delivery model that provides a single point of contact and eliminates the need to negotiate services with multiple carriers; and
• high degree of security that minimizes the risks of data being compromised or corrupted.

In addition to these features, most IPLC carriers offer other services and capabilities, such as multiple recovery options, proactive customer service, adherence to industry interface standards or support for both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint network topologies.

What are the benefits of an IPLC?

Organizations that operate in multiple countries are under increasing pressure to ensure they can communicate and exchange data across geographically distributed locations as efficiently and securely as possible. For this reason, many are turning to IPLC services, which offer several important benefits:

• Customers get a secure, private channel for communicating and exchanging sensitive data.
• Performance is typically better and more predictable than public networks and guarantees a high degree of availability.
• The carrier manages and monitors the network to ensure a high level of resiliency and dependability.
• An organization requires only a single point of contact for ordering and provisioning services.
• Multinational organizations can carry out mission-critical business faster and more efficiently, helping to accelerate growth.
• Some carriers let organizations change their service levels on demand, providing them with the flexibility they need to meet fluctuating and evolving business requirements.

The exact benefits that an organization realizes from an IPLC will depend on the carrier delivering the service. For example, a carrier might provide a service-level agreement that guarantees 99.999% availability or offers business continuity and disaster recovery services with the IPLC.