Broadwing goes ultra-long with Corvis

After months of hype and high market capitalization, Corvis finally is ready for revenue. The company's much-awaited all-optical switch officially ships today, and Broadwing is the first customer.

"The switch shipment Monday completes the picture of making wavelength services [available]," said Shyam Jha, vice president of marketing for Corvis.

The Corvis switch is designed for the core of the network and has a 2.4 Tb/s switch matrix, Jha said. It can support six fiber routes - each with 160 lambdas - up to 4000 kilometers and can switch traffic between fibers. The optical switch also has routing functions, he added.

"The switch is being deployed at strategic locations across the Broadwing network," said Chris Rothlis, vice president of engineering for Broadwing. The backbone provider currently runs traffic on 8 wavelengths at OC-48 rates across the 1164-mile link, which is equivalent to about nearly 1900 kilometers each direction, he said.

"So far, we're very pleased with what we've seen from Corvis," Rothlis said. "We've done quite extensive testing in the lab and in the field, and any issues we've found, Corvis has been very responsive on and gotten those corrected."

Broadwing has investments in Corvis worth $44 million, which could balloon to about $600 million after the vendor's IPO, and has committed to purchase $200 million in Corvis equipment.

Corvis has the first-to-market advantage but will face competition from Nortel, which bought Alcatel, OptiMight, Qtera and Sycamore Networks.

"Time to market is something money can't buy," Jha said. "We'll be on version 2.0 by the time they get to version 1.0."