16 December 2002 -- Nortel Networks has enabled broader deployment of bandwidth for shared infrastructure with the latest release of Nortel Networks OPTera Metro 5000 Multiservice Platform.
Release 5.0 adds new service interfaces and features, enabling service providers to drive increased revenues, lower the cost of bandwidth, and further "operationalise" the optical layer with improvements to network planning and management tools.
With this release, technology advancements position service providers to deploy new services like business continuity, disaster recovery, video, and content networking on a wide scale basis. With Release 5.0, service providers can offer enterprises beyond the Fortune 200 access to affordable broadband services.
"By cost-effectively offering more bandwidth with additional services options, we are enabling a larger percentage of enterprises and service providers to deploy and deliver mission-critical applications that were once financially attainable only by larger corporations," said Brian McFadden, president, Optical Networks, Nortel Networks.
Key features of Release 5.0 include ring-to-ring interconnect between OPTera Metro 5200 rings, which increases the scale and geographic flexibility of the optical network while positioning service providers to drive savings of up to 40 percent in capital expenditures over traditional architectures.
Nortel Networks has also doubled the wavelength density of OPTera Metro 5100 and 5200 through introduction of a 2.5Gbps agile transponder card, which combines key functionality into one circuit pack, reducing power consumption by up to 43 percent and positioning service providers to drive up to 27 percent savings in equipment costs.
In addition, Nortel Networks has extended the reach of trail management, a simple point and click graphical user interface that provides a powerful and efficient method for rapidly turning up end-to-end services, and for delivering end-to-end connection provisioning across Nortel Networks Optical Networks product portfolio.
Deployed in more than 1,000 customer networks in 65 countries, Nortel Networks end-to-end optical network portfolio includes next generation SONET/SDH, optical switching products, photonics (WDM), and Optical Ethernet products. Nortel Networks has deployed more than 250,000 network elements globally.
According to the Dell'Oro Group, Nortel Networks was the "worldwide leader" in optical networking for 2001 and for the first three quarters of 2002 with #1 market shares in total optical transport equipment and metropolitan DWDM, .