Slightly off topic SONET Article, but may be of interest to some...
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Telecommunication failures rectified,
JAKARTA POST
April 30, 1998
The Associated Press via NewsEdge Corporation :
SINGAPORE (JP):
New telecommunications technology has offered telecom
carriers a cheaper and more resilient way to increase
their network capacity in transmitting voice and data
signals, to meet the rising demand on telecom services
like Internet, tele-banking and other multimedia
applications.
According to experts at a conference on
transmission technology held in Singapore last
week, among its many promises, the advancing
technology puts an end to huge economic losses
due to telecommunications failure caused by rising
traffic.
The seminar was sponsored by giant telecom
equipment-makers Alcatel and Lucent
Technologies.
One of the latest transmission technologies is the
Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) system, or its
U.S. equivalent, Synchronous Optical Network
(SONET), which has been increasingly applied by
telecom carriers worldwide.
Laurie Doyle, of Alcatel's transmission division
system, pointing out the estimated large business
losses incurred by telecommunications failure, said
an important feature of SDH is the prevention of this
through its self-healing protection and automatic
restoration mechanism.
He cited the 1987 average loss figure in the U.S.,
which was $3 million per hour for a major airline
carrier, and $6 million per hour in a financial or
trading institution.
Because of SDH's reliability, network operators
would no longer need to have their maintenance
crew working round the clock to fix network
problems.
SDH also has the flexibility to adjust the network in
a timely way to react to traffic changes as demand
for telecom services rises. For past transmission
networks, setting up a new end-user service would
need a new network, which could take weeks or
even months to install.
''The SDH network provides transverse compatibility
between equipment produced by different
manufacturers. The entire communications stream
would no longer have to be torn apart and
reassembled every time a signal has to be added or
dropped,'' Doyle said
Instead, the signals are collected and routed
through a grooming mechanism within a
synchronous frame, he explained.
Another important feature of SDH is a lower cost of
ownership thanks to its centralized network
management.
The centralized management can greatly accelerate
the provision of new services, allowing telecom
operators to start new source of earnings much
sooner.
This system could also determine the quality of
services provided and measure slow resource
degradation, thereby helping to anticipate future
maintenance requirements before a fault actually
occurs.
Alcatel's business development and
communications director, Mario Pagani, said: ''The
SDH technology is future proof investment as it can
be used together with the Wavelength Division
Multiplexing (WDM) technology.''
The WDM system is another transmission
breakthrough boosting the transmission capacity by
reusing the installed optical fibers, especially in
metropolitan networks which have begun to show
signs of fiber congestion.
The use of this new system is expected to increase
over the next few years when a more sophisticated
networking system, called ''all-optical networks'', is
commercially available, providing the potential to
manage and deliver an unprecedented amount of
bandwidth capacity.
The highest transmission rate under the SDH
system mostly used today is at 2.4 gigabits per
second (Gbps); 10 Gbps capacity is also available.
By combining SDH with WDM, the capacity could
be boosted to 400 Gbps per fiber.
Alcatel is the leader in the transmission systems
market, holding 28 percent of market share
worldwide. By far, Alcatel has the largest installed
base of optical networks in the European market.
The company is currently involved in the world's
longest and most complex undersea fiber optic
telecom system, which stretches more than 30,000
km, connecting the Pacific Rim, Southeast Asia,
the Middle East and Western Europe.
By combining the use of SDH and WDM, the project
is capable of carrying 500,000 telephone
conversations simultaneously.
Alcatel is the major supplier of STI' mnd WDM
equipment, undersea cables and electronics.
Customer testing of the project is scheduled for the
middle of 1998, with the first part of the network
scheduled to enter service at the end of the year.
In Indonesia, Alcatel's SDH system is being used to
develop PT Telkom's network in Java; PT Indosat's
backbone network connecting Jakarta-Surabaya;
and in several other transmission projects.
About 50 percent of Indonesia's telecommunications
network has been installed using SDH, with several
new transmission projects to be tendered soon,
including installing a WDM system in the
Maluku-Irian Jaya regional network.
Copyright 1998 JAKARTA POST all rights reserved
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