July 13, 2004 Beijing--Lucent Technologies today announced an optical transport equipment contract with Hubei Unicom, a provincial subsidiary of China Unicom, for its network in Hubei province. This marks the first mesh deployment of Lucent's LambdaUnite multiservice switch (MSS) in a China Unicom network.
According to the terms of the contract, Lucent will supply the LambdaUnite MSS, a next-generation optical transport system and switch, as well as the WaveStar ADM 16/1 and Navis optical management system (OMS). The intelligent control plane on the LambdaUnite MSS will allow Hubei Unicom to quickly "turn up" its network as new network elements are added, and it also gives Hubei the ability to offer differentiated end-customer services with different levels of protection able to be provisioned flexibly for each service.
"Carriers are looking for more robust and flexible network architectures," said Xing-Sha Zhou, director, Optical Networking Group, Lucent Technologies China. "The intelligent control plane on LambdaUnite MSS allows for fast mesh restoration, which allows carriers like Hubei Unicom to quickly turn up their networks, and gives them a flexible and efficient protection mechanism in the case of an emergency."
Developed by Bell Labs, the LambdaUnite MSS bridges traffic between data-intensive metro networks and high-speed optical core networks, connecting cities, campuses and corporate networks to larger, long haul public networks. It enables service providers to seamlessly upgrade their networks to 40 Gbits/sec and allows them to deliver new value-added services such as Gigabit Ethernet.
The compact size and low energy requirements of LambdaUnite MSS also means operators can make significant cost savings compared to traditional systems. This flexible single-shelf system was recently optimized for applications in national, provincial, and metro networks, supporting in-service upgrades from 160 to 320 Gbits/sec, as well as to 640 Gbits/sec, allowing the system to grow when network capacity increases. Mesh restoration capabilities were also added to help carriers migrate to new mesh-based networks, while at the same time, leveraging traditional restoration architectures.
With a deployed base of more than 25,000 systems worldwide, the WaveStar ADM 16/1 product is for the SDH market, and can be used for interoffice, access or regional applications. The system does this by combining multiple low-speed electrical and optical inputs into a single 2.5-Gbit/sec signal.
With Lucent's Navis OMS, Hubei Unicom can perform single-user, automated provisioning, routing and proactive service assurance of optical networks and services allowing rapid turn-up of customer services. By using the advanced fault correlation capabilities, the software allows Hubei Unicom to quickly identify and restore customer services. The Navis OMS is part of Lucent's software portfolio of open, standards-based systems deployed worldwide for multi-vendor and converged wireline, mobile and enterprise networks.