Blazing an optical trail: Qwest plans rely on start-ups

Instead of choosing equipment vendor stalwarts, Qwest Communications is turning to start-ups for much of its migration to next generation Internet services. In an announcement expected this week, Qwest will outline a fast-paced upgrade to an all-optical network running at OC-192 speeds.

Qwest will give the nod of approval to Corvis and Qtera for the use of their equipment at the core of Qwest's network.

"By going all-optical, we will be able to migrate to the next generation network a lot faster and at a much lower cost," said Vab Goel, vice president of emerging technologies for Qwest. He expects a 70% savings in operational costs and a 90% cut in equipment costs due to fewer network regeneration points.

"Instead of needing 30 regeneration sites, we will only need two," Goel said. The carrier plans to upgrade its entire network by the second quarter of next year and have traffic running by the third quarter of 2000. The optical leap will bring Qwest's OC-48 IP backbone up to OC-192 speeds. The remainder of its network, already running at OC-192 over Sonet, will migrate to IP over dense wave division multiplexing.

"It is important to have an edge in the marketplace, and time to market is a huge part of that," Goel said. Qtera and Corvis are helping Qwest further that edge, he added.

"The only way to gain market share is to introduce products with significantly more value to the customer, not just marginal improvements on performance or cost," said Fahri Diner, CEO of Qtera. The company is addressing the needs for lower bandwidth cost, survivability and protection and wavelength provisioning.

"This true optical network will enable Qwest to scale its capacity and get the longest reach," said Glenn Falcao, executive vice president at Corvis.

Cost is a major factor in the network operations, and the fewer devices, the better, said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics. Delivering those needs quickly adds credibility to the start-ups' equipment.

Qwest has been working with Qtera and Corvis for about a year and currently has their equipment in its all-optical test bed, along with equipment from another start-up, Siara Systems. Qwest also is using equipment from Cerent, Cisco, Juniper Networks, Lucent and Nortel. Siara will provide the local access rings, and Cerent will provide aggregation.