Alcatel (Paris) and Tyco Submarine Systems Ltd. (Morristown, NJ) were jointly awarded a $51-million

Alcatel (Paris) and Tyco Submarine Systems Ltd. (Morristown, NJ) were jointly awarded a $51-million supply contract for a new high-capacity undersea cable system in the Black Sea. The contract for the 1300-km Black Sea Fibre Optic Cable System (BS-FOCS) was awarded by BTC (Bulgaria), CyTA (Cyprus), OTE (Greece), ukretelecom (Ukraine), and Westelcom (Russia). When completed in the summer of 2000, the network will connect Varna, Bulgaria, Odessa in the Ukraine, and Novorossijsk, Russia. Each pair of the 2-fiber-pair cable system will initially operate at 2.5 Gbits/sec, with the capability for future upgrades to at least 10 Gbits/sec per fiber pair using dense wavelength-division multiplexing.