DWDM vendors up ante at OFC: Pirelli, Ciena and Lucent to offer higher capacity

Several vendor announcements at last week's Optical Fiber Conference demonstrate that ongoing advancements in dense wave division multiplexing are fueling an increasingly competitive equipment market.

Pirelli Cables and Systems North America introduced the WaveMux 6400 system, a 64-channel, long-haul DWDM system; Ciena Corp. debuted its 40-port MultiWave Sentry 4000 system; and Lucent Technologies' Optical Networks touted its WaveStar OLS 400G system, announced in late January, that can scale up to 80 ports.

Pirelli chose to double its previous capacity to 64 ports, even though the ITU-T grid identifies 40 channels as its standard, said Neal Stoker, Pirelli's North American marketing director.

"We didn't want to let standards stop us" from following the common doubling practice, he said.

The Pirelli, Ciena and Lucent systems are similar in that all use 50 GHz spacing-in lieu of 100 GHz on previous systems-to squeeze the additional channels onto the fiber. But while Ciena and Pirelli have their systems in customers' hands, Lucent's system will reach its first customer, AT&T, late this year.

"If [the other vendors are] delivering now, that's great," said William Gartner, Lucent's product realization vice president for optical networking and Sonet products. "[WaveStar] will be industry-leading capacity at the time it's introduced."

Even though vendors are pushing channel density to new levels, the highest level of deployment among U.S. carriers currently is 16 wavelengths. But Mathew Steinberg, optical networking director for Ryan Hankin Kent, expects carriers to begin approving and installing the 64-channel system to accommodate future expansion, using only the capacity they need to start.

USN BUYS CONNECTICUT TELCO USN Communications, one of the largest local service resellers in the U.S., has completed its acquisition of Connecticut Telephone, the nation's fourth-largest cellular reseller. USN now will be able to add wireless to its bundled service offerings.

BROADBAND CONTENT GROWING Cambridge, Mass.-based start-up Arepa Inc. has developed a platform that will allow broadband network providers to offer content previously reserved for CD-ROMs. Using the platform, PC users connected via ADSL or cable modems will be able to run applications and software titles that will take full advantage of both networks' speed. CD-ROM games and office applications are among the possible applications.