Lucent contracts with NETs and France Telecom for European optical networks
Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) announced an optical networking contract with NETs, a pan-European backbone operator and member of the Tiscali group. Under the contract, Lucent will expand NETs' pan-European optical network and enable it to add capacity for its customers across Europe.
The agreement expands NETs' network into Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Eastern Europe and maintains Lucent's position as its primary supplier. Previously, Lucent had installed NETs' optical networks in Northern Europe and between France and the UK. The NETs pan-European optical network provides high-speed bandwidth services to business and service provider customers across Europe.
These high-capacity, scalable optical networks will be able to help NETs keep up with the demand for bandwidth-hungry applications and high-speed Internet access.
Lucent will be installing its optical technology, upgrading NETs' current 400 gigabits per second (Gb/s), dense wavelength division multiplexing system (DWDM) system, to the Lucent WaveStar OLS 800G, which transmits at 800 Gb/s.
The Lucent WaveStar OLS system uses DWDM technology, which divides light into multiple wavelengths, or colours, each carrying distinct streams of information thereby significantly increasing the amount of traffic each optical fibre can carry.
France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) also selected Lucent as its sole supplier for a 10 Gbit/s optical network, and also began tests of the WaveStar LambdaRouter all-optical switch.
The multi-year contract appoints Lucent as a major supplier of an advanced 10 gigabits per second (Gb/s) optical network designed to accommodate the growing bandwidth requirements of France Telecom's business customers in France. At the heart of the network will be a Lucent optical networking system with enough capacity to transmit 2 million one-page e-mails per second across a single fibre strand.
Under the terms of the agreement, Lucent will supply the WaveStar TDM 10G, which enables carriers to transmit information across a single wavelength of light on a fibre at a speed of 10 Gb/s. The WaveStar system, developed by Lucent's Bell Labs, also has a self-healing ring architecture that instantly reroutes information in the event of a fibre cut.
With Gigabit Ethernet transport capability between customers' businesses in multiple locations, the WaveStar system enables the efficient interconnection of Local Area Networks and Metropolitan Area Networks. This allows for easy maintenance, reduced per-bit transmission costs and leads to lowered costs for both the service provider and its customers.
In another project, France Telecom has begun testing the Lucent WaveStar LambdaRouter, a high-capacity, all-optical switch. Developed by Lucent's Bell Labs in just 18 months, the LambdaRouter uses a series of microscopic mirrors to simultaneously route optical signals in the network from fibre to fibre, without having to convert them to electrical signals.
This new switch, which can route traffic 16 times faster than electrical switches is capable of routing billions of e-mail messages every second. The testing involves managing wavelengths and distributing bandwidth to areas of the network that most need it. France Telecom can therefore experiment with new revenue-generating services and plan how its network could evolve as traffic increases.
About Nets:
Nets, a member of the Tiscali group, is a pan-European telecom and infrastructure operator, specialized in high speed transmission for carriers, ISPs and large businesses. For more information, visit www.netsgroup.com.
About Tiscali:
Tiscali S.p.A., (Nuovo Mercato, Milan: TIS, Nouveau Marché, Paris: 005773), is a pan-European Internet communication company providing access, content and business applications as well as innovative communication services. For more information, visit www.tiscali.com.
About Lucent Technologies:
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, designs and delivers networks for communications service providers. For more information, visit www.lucent.com.