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Technology Stocks : JDS Uniphase (JDSU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: t2 who wrote (1254)	10/13/1999 7:23:00 AM
From: Glenn McDougall	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24042

Nortel shifts gear, sets show on ear New fibre-optic equipment sets telecommunications speed record Bert Hill The Ottawa Citizen Nortel Networks unveiled super-fast equipment yesterday that dramatically increases the capacity of telecommunications systems. The gear demonstrated at a trade show in Geneva can service 112,000 internet connections on a single strand of fibre no thicker than a hair. Nortel said the system can move a four-million-volume library across North America in less than two seconds. "Today we've set a new Internet and networking land speed record using light," said Nortel president and chief executive John Roth. In the latest demonstration of how engineers can build "the fat pipe" for demanding consumers and phone companies, Nortel showed it can carry as much as 6.4 Terabits per second of Internet and other traffic over a single fibre. For the layman, the announcement could mean faster connections on the Internet with more security and reliability. "This technology will help us accommodate the enormous demand for bandwidth from the market and build the backbone of the future," said Nortel vice-president James Fordsham. Nortel plans to start selling the new product in 2001. A version that pokes along at a respectable 1.6 terabits per second will hit the market shortly. The latest announcement keeps Nortel ahead -- for now -- of competitors such as Lucent Technologies which have also reached similar speeds. An ordinary voice phone call moves across copper wires with less than one-billionth of the capacity. The key to the strategy is fibre-optic strands and a rainbow of light colors that steadily increase capacity. The first generation of fibre-optic systems could handle only four wavelengths on a strand. But steady advances in technology have pushed capacity to more than 80 wave lengths. The result is systems that can move more information faster than ever before. To put this in context, the Canadian government is working with private- sector scientists on a next-generation Internet that will operate at 40 gigabits per second. That means each channel will be able to deliver a 2 1é2-hour movie such as Titanic in less than half a second.