March 9, 2005 Anaheim, CA -- As part of its Ultra Long Haul (ULH) DWDM network expansion strategy, MCI today announced the deployment of ULH technology on 3,129 route miles of its fiber-optic network. Network routes in the deployment include New York City to Cleveland, Chicago to Denver via Omaha, and Salt Lake City to Los Angeles via Sacramento.
According to the company, its ULH network will shorten the adoption time for applications such as web services, grid computing, and storage networking, while also creating a platform for future infrastructure-based products, including managed wavelength services, which the company says will be available by the end of the year.
"Last year we announced our intent to be the first communications company in the United States to deploy and activate the optical network of the future," notes Jack Wimmer, MCI vice president of network architecture and advance technology. "Today we have reached a significant milestone."
According to the company, the ULH infrastructure will dramatically increase network reliability and bandwidth availability, while enabling consolidated network management and end-to-end automation for better monitoring and provisioning of services. ULH will also enable the network with OC-768 capacity to support emerging high-bandwidth data applications, as well as on-demand customer capacity upgrades.
The company says that when its multi-year network strategy is complete, it will have deployed 32,000 miles of ULH technology nationwide.