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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pat Hughes who wrote (11244)	11/20/1999 1:49:00 PM
From: Bindusagar Reddy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

MCI WorldCom frame relay backup favors Lucent platform (So much for all doubting Cisco THOMASES) Sweet music for LU/ASND fans) By David Rohde Network World Fusion, 11/19/99 networkworld.com MCI WorldCom yesterday launched several new frame relay back-up initiatives, in the process appearing to reassert its faith in its own key vendor, Lucent. The carrier announced it would construct a network-to-network interface between its two principal frame relay networks - one provided by Lucent and the other by Nortel Networks. It will then offer customers of either platform the opportunity to use the other as a backup. Although customers will have to pay separately for the back-up network, it will be available for 30% below regular frame relay prices. MCI WorldCom also announced it is beginning construction on a parallel Lucent network using the vendor's ATM-based CBX 550 switches and its Jade-2 software load. Jade-2 is a variation of Jade-1, also called J-1, the software load that triggered the failure of the Lucent network for up to 10 days in August. When complete in the first half of 2000, the new Lucent platform will be integrated with the existing one, giving the overall network greater scalability to accommodate growth. Analysts took MCI WorldCom's moves as quiet benediction to continue with the Lucent network and as a signal that it was not Lucent's code itself that was at fault in the August incident but rather integration issues. "The problems were not in J-1," flatly stated Frank Dzubeck, president of Communications Network Architects, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm. MCI WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers had appeared to blame Lucent shortly after the August outage but company officials have been backing away from that statement ever since. In other frame relay moves: -- Next month MCI WorldCom will introduce Frame Shield, a disaster-recovery option designed to automatically reroute frame relay traffic to ISDN back-up services in case of inordinate congestion. -- The company has introduced a new policy called Proactive Notification in which the company promises to contact a customer within one hour if any of that customer's frame connections go down for at least 10 minutes. -- The company has also introduced a Flat Rate Access promotion under which customers can pay the same fee for dedicated-access lines of similar size around the country. Exact prices were not immediately available. Some observers wonder why MCI WorldCom is forging ahead on yet another frame relay buildout when it is attempting to buy Sprint, which has two frame relay networks of its own. As in most discussions of the megamerger, it appeared that little has filtered down to the operational level in the deal struck by Ebbers and Sprint CEO William Esrey. "At this point, given where we are, it's a little premature to say where Sprint will fit in," said Fred Briggs, MCI WorldCom's chief technology officer. Sprint has two frame relay networks - one based on Alcatel switches and one based on Nortel. But Dzubeck points out that Sprint's Nortel network is not the same as MCI WorldCom's Nortel network, since Sprint's is based on Nortel Passport switches and MCI's is based on older Bay Networks routers that Nortel picked up in its own acquisition of Bay.