American Electric Power (aep), Columbus, OH, has agreed to buy sonet transport equipment from Nortel, Brampton, ON, Canada, to build a communications network for internal use and capacity resale. aep plans to deploy its network over the next two years throughout Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. The agreement with Nortel includes the purchase of s/dms TransportNode OC-48 (2.5-Gbit/sec), OC-12 (622-Mbit/sec), OC-3 (155-Mbit/sec) Express systems and Nortel?s Integrated Network Management Broadband products.