Lucent Technologies and Corning will collaborate to improve the performance of optical long-haul systems. They are working to deliver longer reach at increasing data rates for long- and ultra-long-haul networks.

The work will initially focus on combining the use of Corning's LEAF non-zero dispersion-shifted (NZ-DSF) fibre with Lucent's new LambdaXtreme Transport, a dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) ultra-long-haul, high-capacity system.

Further work with Corning's dispersion-managed fibre should boost 40Gbit/s distance rates.