US West, Englewood, CO, has installed Alcatel?s Synchronous Optical Network (sonet) multiplexers in a corporate ring network for Microsoft?s facilities in and around Redmond, WA. Alcatel is providing 10 nodes of its Alcatel 1648 sonet multiplexers in a bidirectional line-switched ring configuration for traffic protection and service restoration. According to Richardson, TX-based Alcatel, Microsoft is using its equipment as the main transport engine of its backbone network. The 1648 SM is expected to increase network bandwidth, allowing Microsoft to consolidate its data, voice, and video traffic. With the multiplexers, Microsoft will migrate the network to accommodate centralized bandwidth management of Synchronous Transfer Mode and atm payloads. US West is providing the network engineering and project coordinating, and Alcatel is providing training, installation, and network testing support.