Ocean (Dublin, Ireland) announced a $108-million agreement with Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ) to provide a nationwide fiber-optic network linking Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Galway, and Waterford. With the Irish telecommunications market fully deregulated as of December 1998, the five-year agreement prepares Ocean for future competition. The first phase of the Ocean network, based on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) infrastructure, is planned for completion early this year.