Guess this helps explain why CIEN is getting killed today, as LU had a nice win in the Long Haul DWDM market with T. Wonder who T will use for short haul????
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Monday January 26, 2:20 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: AT&T
AT&T Chairman Unveils Plans to 'Future Proof' World's Largest Network; Announces
Technology, Capacity Enhancements
NEW YORK, Jan. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- AT&T Chairman C. Michael Armstrong today
announced dramatic plans to ''future proof'' the company's network for voice, data, image and
Internet calling and surpass any other network architecture on cost efficiencies and technology.
''To meet our customers' expectations, AT&T's network needs to carry every type of traffic they
want and in the capacities they want -- high usage at the lowest cost - and that's what our new
network architecture lets us do,'' Armstrong told financial analysts at a conference here today.
Under its new network architecture, AT&T will be able to handle any type of traffic a customer
has, in unlimited amounts, well into the next millennium. The company says it is greatly boosting
the capacity of its 40,000 route miles of fiber installed in the U.S. through a new SONET
(Synchronous Optical Network) photonics technology and is providing its various voice, data and
Internet networks over a common fiber transport system.
AT&T said it will be the first carrier to test and deploy a system that can carry more than 3
million simultaneous calls on a single SONET fiber. The company will be using Lucent
Technologies' new WaveStarT OLS 400G, announced today, the industry's first 80-wavelength
Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) system. ''DWDM technology - which uses light to
magnify transmission -- makes it possible for us to increase the transport capacity of our existing
network by a factor of 10, without having to lay any additional fiber-optic cable,'' said
Armstrong. ''This enhancement alone will help save us more than $1 billion over five years on
facilities and decrease our potential SONET equipment costs by more than one-third as well as
help us have a low-unit-cost architecture.''
AT&T is currently the industry leader in DWDM deployment, with more wavelength systems in
service than any other long-distance carrier. In February this year, AT&T will mark a major
milestone when its 1,000th DWDM system becomes operational.
AT&T is continuing to improve its low-cost network architecture, having invested some $7
billion in its network last year alone on its SONET build-out and other improvements. The
company currently has coast-to-coast connectivity with 32 large fiber rings. This year, the
company will add another 20 rings, completing the three-year project and delivering transmission
in any form and with sub-second emergency restoration capabilities.
Armstrong pointed out the synergies expected between AT&T's long-distance SONET rings with
the smaller, local SONET rings that Teleport Communications Group has in some 66 markets
across the country. ''We're now completing a flexible, cost-effective build of long-haul SONET
rings and when they are connected to TCG's SONET rings it would enable nationwide
end-to-end connectivity from customer premises to customer premises.'' The company's merger
with TCG is expected to be completed later this year.
The company also said it will add seven high-capacity 4ESS switches over the next two years to
its base of 136 systems, which automatically route calls over AT&T's voice network. In addition,
the company said to meet near-term demand it plans to add a variety of smaller, more economical
and flexible local switches that can handle voice traffic initially and data in the longer term. These
local edge vehicles, which sit closest to the customer on the ''edge'' of the network, would use
and augment as necessary TCG's embedded base of switches.
AT&T has been using a similar edge vehicle architecture for its growing data network. The
company plans to add some 200 edge switches to meet the astonishing growth of frame relay,
ATM and Internet Protocol, or IP, services. These vehicles support our unprecedented growth in
frame relay and also provide our new emerging services, such as AT&T WorldNet Service and
WorldNet Virtual Private Network Service. Daily, AT&T's network handles over 12 terabytes of
switched, IP, ATM and frame relay traffic.
In addition to its new network architecture plan, AT&T plans to be able to provide business
customers with ATM switches on their premises, which will allow businesses to consolidate their
voice and data traffic onto fewer yet high-speed access lines. This could help businesses lower
communications costs and improve their data networking readiness. AT&T said it plans to test this
new approach this year.
In a related announcement today, the company said it plans to roll out AT&T WorldNet(SM)
Voice, for consumers interested in the economical voice calling available over the Internet. The
service will be carried over AT&T's extensive world-class IP facilities, beginning this year.
A new Network Operations Center to open late next year also is on the horizon at AT&T,
Armstrong noted. The company has begun work on a state-of-the-art network management
center in Bedminster, N.J., where it will consolidate oversight of all its network services - local,
long distance, global, SONET, wireless and data -- some of which are now managed in separate
centers.
AT&T's current NOC, also in Bedminster, was built in 1986, when the network was much less
complex and average daily calling volumes were some 33 million. Today, on an average business
day, the AT&T network handles more than 250 million calls.
SOURCE: AT&T |
