Lucent Technologies Delivers Record-Breaking Optical
Networking Capacity; Five Times Greater Than Current
Systems
AT&T is First Customer to Deploy
MURRAY HILL, N.J., Jan. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU - news)
unveiled a global optical networking system that delivers five times the bandwidth of today's
commercial fiber-optic systems. Lucent's system provides up to 400 gigabit-per-second
capacity over a single strand of fiber -- equivalent to carrying the per-second traffic of the
entire worldwide Internet over one fiber. AT&T will be the first to test and deploy the new
system.
Designed by Bell Labs, Lucent's single-platform system, called the WaveStar(TM) OLS
400G, is the first to enable communications providers to grow incrementally from one to 80
wavelengths, or channels.
Leapfrogging current competitive offerings, Lucent's new optical networking system can be
configured to handle up to eight fibers, each transmitting 400 gigabits per second, to give
communications providers a maximum capacity of 3.2 terabits (or 3.2 trillion bits) per second
of voice, video and data traffic. That's equivalent to transmitting over 90,000 volumes of an
encyclopedia in one second.
At this triple-terabit rate, communications service providers can realize equipment cost
savings up to 40 percent over lower-capacity systems available today from other vendors.
Lucent's WaveStar system is also the first to support a simultaneous mix of multi-gigabit
speed rates of 2.5 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s over one fiber, and it's the first to support equipment from
a variety of vendors transmitting at a mix of these two rates. These capabilities enable
carriers to ''pay as they grow,'' adding capacity as needed while leveraging their existing
infrastructure.
''Lucent is driving down the ongoing cost of transmitting a bit of information close to zero
while pushing capacity towards infinity,'' said Gerald Butters, president of Lucent's Optical
Networking business. ''With other commercial systems offering today a maximum of 80
gigabit-per-second capacity over one fiber, Lucent's 400 gigabit-per-second system takes
optical networking to a new level. With this five-fold increase in capacity over a single fiber,
we've in essence taken Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing - DWDM - and created
'Ultra-Dense' Wavelength Division Multiplexing - UWDM.'' |
