Cosmo, thread: regarding recent discussion on leading the horse to water or being lead to the well: From Reuters:
<Canada's Nortel unveils plan for speedier Internet
By Lydia Zajc
TORONTO, May 4 (Reuters) - Nortel Networks Corp. (NT.TO - news)(NT - news) on Tuesday unveiled technology it said would increase 640-fold the speed at which voice, video and data could be transmitted over the Internet.
Brampton, Ontario-based Nortel, one of the world's largest telecommunications equipment makers, announced in Boston that it would be selling the new fiber optic-based technology next year.
Using current products, a movie such as the blockbuster Titanic can now be zipped across a fiber optic strand to about 72,000 Internet users at the same time.
With its optical amplification system, Nortel will provide enough fiber capacity and speed to allow Titanic to be simultaneously played on 360,000 computers, using one strand of fiber.
The product, OPTera 1600G, will help lay the basis for the new visually based Internet, said Greg Mumford, Nortel's general manager of optical and SONET networks.
''This is going to give our customers that are using our backbone, the ability to put more stuff down it,'' Mumford said.
Nortel equipment already carries 75 percent of the backbone Internet traffic in North America.
Analysts agreed that Nortel, which changed its name from Northern Telecom Ltd. last week, is out to beef up its product offerings in the face of increasing competition.
''We're getting into a little bit of 'my switch is bigger than your switch','' said Rob MacLellan, analyst at CT Securities.
Both Nortel and U.S. rival Lucent Technologies Inc. (LU - news) already have similar systems that aren't as fast, he said.
But Internet use, which is expanding at an enormous rate, isn't quite ready for this technology, MacLellan added. ''The market for those ultra-high capacity systems isn't here yet,'' MacLellan said. ''It's sort of leading the market.''
Mumford said that Nortel would hold customer trials of the product by the fourth quarter of this year and then ramp up production to full volume by the first half of next year.
He said he could not predict how the product's sales could affect Nortel's bottom line. Last year the company had $17.6 billion in revenues.
Shares in Nortel dipped 45 Canadian cents to C$101.05 on the Toronto Stock Exchange after rising to C$104 in earlier trade. In New York, the stock also reversed course and fell $1 to $69.44 after trading as high as $71.87.
Rick Broadhead, co-author of the Canadian Internet Handbook, noted that the growing number of cybersurfers means that capacity provided by current technology is being gobbled up and that new developments are barely staying ahead of exploding Internet use.
''The Internet is moving almost as fast as advancements in technology are moving.''
($1=$1.45 Canadian) |
