By Mardi Balgochian Scalise
Nortel Networks announced major contract awards, both abroad and the United States. Nortel Networks has now announced nearly $200 million in optical awards in Asia over the past six months. To date, Nortel Networks has won 28 contracts in China for 10-gigabit and DWDM optical solutions spanning 40,000 kilometers.
China Telecom regional subsidiary Anhui Telecom has selected Nortel Networks (NYSE/TSE: NT) to supply a $6.5 million optical backbone network spanning the central China province of Anhui. Extending over 1,500 kilometers, the Anhui Telecom network will be based on Nortel Networks OPTera Connect DX optical switches and the OPTera Long Haul 1600 Optical Line System, a DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) solution. It will include two rings for delivery of high-quality voice, data and leased bandwidth services to customers in the eastern and northern areas of the province. The Anhui network will also serve as part of China Telecom's national, high-capacity, broadband network.
Nortel Networks OPTera Connect DX optical switches bring a new class of Optical Internet to service providers and carriers, increasing network capacity, providing flexible services, improving connection and network management capabilities, and enhancing network reliability.
In addition, four China telecom regional operators have selected broadband metropolitan networking solutions from Nortel Networks to bring the high-performance Internet to the provinces of Heilongjiang, Zhejiang and Shandong and the city of Qingdao.
Heilongjiang Telecom will deploy province-wide Nortel Networks Optical Ethernet solution -- including Nortel Networks Passport 8600 routing switch and Nortel Networks Shasta 5000 Broadband Service Node (BSN) -- to provide fast, reliable remote access. Zhejiang Telecom and Shandong Telecom will deploy Shasta 5000 BSNs to provide broadband access user aggregation and value-added services.
Qingdao Telecom will use Nortel Networks Passport 1100 switches to expand its Optical Ethernet solution -- also from Nortel Networks -- for delivery of high-performance Internet access and services to more than 100 broadband neighborhoods.
Nortel Networks Passport 8600 is a carrier-grade routing switch, and provides ease of use, high performance, reliability and scalability within a single voice, video and data platform. It can be used in campus and in-building backbone networks, or in service provider metro applications requiring higher performance, routing or metropolitan area network (MAN) connectivity. Passport 8600 is designed to provide 99.999 percent uptime to network managers, critical in today's emerging eBusiness environment, where downtime can result in loss of competitive advantage, customer loyalty and revenues.
Nortel Networks' Shasta 5000 BSN is designed to power the subscriber edge of the network, where 'first mile' technologies meet the Internet backbone, and where broadband subscribers meet broadband services and content. Shasta 5000 BSN provides a universal aggregation point with capability to support wholesale dial, fixed and mobile wireless, metro optical and Ethernet extension, ATM/frame relay, and leased line subscribers. It enables service providers to increase competitive advantage by transitioning from the simple connectivity model enabled by first generation subscriber management systems to a cost-effective, network-based, valued-added broadband services model.
Nortel Networks end-to-end Optical Ethernet solution offers customers 10/100/1000 megabits per second with the reliability and availability of optical networks. Delivering seamless connections from the core network to the desktop exclusively using Ethernet protocol, Optical Ethernet allows services to be tailored to meet customer requirements, and those services to be rapidly provisioned. This enables a new level of responsiveness to changes in bandwidth and site requirements dictated by competitive environments.
Further, Nortel Networks has added the Sprint Local Telephone Division (LTD), Call-Net Enterprises, Korea Telecom and Télécom Développement to its list of more than 1,000 Metro Optical and Optical Ethernet customers in 45 countries, the company announced at SUPERCOMM 2001.
Nortel Networks also unveiled two new initiatives made possible by leveraging its Metro Optical and Optical Ethernet capabilities -- a new managed services solution jointly developed with Microsoft Corp., and Nortel Networks Succession* Interactive Multimedia Server (IMS). These initiatives will unleash the potential for service providers to profit from the high-performance Internet, enabling delivery of next generation multimedia and hosted applications over fast, simple, reliable optical networks.
Combining Nortel Networks' metro optical and IP (Internet Protocol) solutions with the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server product line, the joint solution with Microsoft -- called the Continuously Available Managed Services solution -- creates an environment to deliver software as a service. This solution is being designed to enable service providers to deliver managed services for mission-critical applications by building data centers that limit single points of failure.
Nortel Networks' Succession IMS is a carrier-class multimedia applications server that will enable service providers to rapidly develop and deploy flexible, mobile, personal services, and to make them available to users virtually "anytime, anywhere" on any device and across any network. Nortel Networks will offer with Succession IMS a suite of pre-programmed services -- like spontaneous video calling, dynamic call handling and personal call manager -- that will position customers to begin generating new revenues almost immediately.
Nortel Networks tunable laser implementation on the metro platform is a breakthrough technology designed to significantly reduce operational costs and complexity for service providers, and to enable next generation managed wavelength services. Nortel Networks has developed tunable capability for Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 5200 platform, placing flexibility and dynamic bandwidth provisioning at the heart of its vision for metro optical networks.
Sprint LTD will leverage Nortel Networks OPTera products to build its first OC-192 network in Las Vegas, the fastest growing metropolitan network for Sprint LTD. In addition, Sprint LTD has approved Nortel Networks next generation SONET solution for its national metro networks.
Call-Net Enterprises has selected Nortel Networks OPTera Metro solutions for its next generation metro optical network, beginning with its recently launched network in Montreal. Nortel Networks Metro Optical solutions offer cost-effective delivery of native SONET, private line and ATM services, while building a foundation for Optical Ethernet infrastructure. Call-Net is currently using a fast, simple and reliable Optical Ethernet solution from Nortel Networks in its internal network.
Korea Telecom has selected a Nortel Networks metro Internet solution to bring the speed, reliability and profitability of the high-performance Internet to businesses and neighborhoods in metropolitan Seoul. Korea Telecom will deploy Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 5200 Multiservice Platform. Korea's largest service provider plans to use the speed and bandwidth of DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) to reduce access bottlenecks for Web users in Seoul, where 63 per cent of the population is on-line.
France's Télécom Développement has selected Nortel Networks for a major expansion of its national and regional optical network, including implementation and maintenance of metro optical networks in several cities across France. A joint venture of telecommunications company Cégetel and SNCF, the French state-owned railroad operator, Télécom Développement will bring Nortel Networks optical technology into the metro area to evolve and extend the services it can offer to its carrier, ISP, ASP and enterprise customers.
Leveraging DWDM, next generation SONET and Optical Ethernet technologies, Nortel Networks OPTera family of metro optical solutions accelerates transformation of metropolitan networks to broadband infrastructure, redefining performance and economics for enterprise computer networking while enabling new and profitable services for carriers.
About Nortel Networks:
Nortel Networks is a global Internet and communications provider with capabilities spanning Optical, Wireless, Local, Personal Internet and eBusiness. For more information, visit www.nortelnetworks.com.