UUnet, Part III
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FUTURE EXPANSION PLANS
WorldCom announced in March that in response to the rapid openings of telecommunications
markets to competition in Europe, the company will begin construction of an all-fiber optic
pan-European network. The first phase will connect London, Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris
later this year. It is intended that, over time, the pan-European network will interconnect
WorldCom's city networks in Europe and provide the platform for the development of
broadband national networks as they develop in the future.
The pan-European network will be built using the same architecture as WorldCom's
metropolitan area networks - a series of fully resilient, fiber optic, SDH loops. The network will
support multiple 2.5 gigabit channels per fiber pair using wave division multiplexing and optical
amplifiers. This technology will support a capacity in the tens of gigabits per fiber pair and allow
for rapid installation of additional capacity as customer demands increase.
WorldCom has recently received regulatory approval to build and operate national and
international telecommunications networks in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France and
Sweden. With the approach of January 1, 1998, the date set by the European Commission for
the full liberalization of telecommunications in European Union member states, it is anticipated
that others will join this growing list of countries opening their markets to competition.
The company also announced that as part of the first phase of the pan-European network, it
will build two cross-Channel submarine cables linking the UK with the Netherlands and
France. The cross-Channel cables will be installed in the third quarter of this year and will be
provisioned with a 48 fiber cable. This will provide ample capacity for the predicted growth in
high-bandwidth data and Internet traffic and the future development of WorldCom's
pan-European network. This will also provide connectivity to the UK in its role as a
telecommunications hub now served by over 40 internationally licensed carriers. The overland
portion of the pan-European network will be provisioned as a readily upgradeable eight-fiber
network.
Last year, WorldCom announced the launch of a project to build a 20 gigabit transatlantic cable
system connecting London and New York. In October 1996, Cable and Wireless joined Gemini
as a 50:50 partner - the project is ahead of plan and will be operational in early 1998.
When both the transatlantic system and the pan-European network are complete, a WorldCom
customer could be connected from, for example, Paris to Los Angeles over a single physical
network built, owned and operated by WorldCom. |
