Lucent: Fiber-optic network halves wireless operating costs

Lucent Technologies introduced today its WaveStar wireless network solution, a fiber-optic network that the company says will cut a wireless service provider’s backbone operating costs in half over a five-year period.

“If you look what it would cost to lease T-1 and T-3 lines, and compare that to what it would cost to buy this optical equipment from us, install it and then maintain it for those five years, you’re going to approach 50% savings for a medium to large wireless back-haul network,” said a company spokesman.

Lucent also promised that the WaveStar would significantly decrease network downtime, for both ring- or mesh-based optical networks.

“If a fiber cut were to occur, the system would automatically notice this and send the information in the opposite direction around the ring,” explained the spokesman.

It would work similarly in a mesh-based system where, instead of the information moving around a ring, hubs are connected to other hubs.

“So if a link between two places were to go down, the system would automatically reroute the information through another hub to the final destination. And this all happens at the speed of light, so people don’t even notice the change. It doesn’t work that way with copper.”

WaveStar uses Sonet and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) transmission systems that operate at speeds ranging from 155 Mb/s to 10 Gb/s. The system is modular, so wireless providers can tailor their system to their needs. It also uses dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) systems for networks with even higher bandwidth requirements.

“They can put in a 10 Gb/s system today, and in a year or two, if their 3G system needs more bandwidth, they can put in a few more 10 gigs, or they can go to one of our 40 gig systems,” said the spokesman.