Lucent Technologies Announces New Optical Networking Products That Will Make Data Networks Faster, Smarter and More Cost-Effective

Business Wire, June 8, 1999

MURRAY HILL, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 8, 1999--

Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), the global leader in optical networking technology, today announced a series of advanced optical networking products that will enable carriers to build and manage high-performance optical data networks. These networks will help carriers provide the capacity needed to break through the Internet's bottlenecks, optimize the performance of such Internet-based applications as distance learning, collaborative conferencing and online investing, and offer exciting new services for the next millennium.

Adding to Lucent's industry-leading WaveStar(tm) family of optical networking products, these new technologies will lead to dramatic increases in fiber capacity, a greater than 90 percent reduction in inventory and operations costs, and ultra-reliable network monitoring.

"It's all about bandwidth -- providing ever-increasing amounts of it, as well as intelligent, cost-effective ways to manage it," said Gerry Butters, president of Lucent's Optical Networking Group. "With these groundbreaking products, Lucent will continue to combine the power of the Internet with optical networking's virtually limitless capacity to deliver vast amounts of information -- and exciting new services -- at the speed of light. Thanks to Bell Labs' breakthroughs in photonics, networking in the new millennium will be limited only by the boundaries of our own imaginations."

New Amplifier Will Increase Bandwidth, Make Optical Networking Universally Accessible

Designed by Bell Labs, Lucent's new WaveStar L-Band Amplifier will enable service providers to transmit data, voice and video traffic in an optical wavelength range, called the "L" Band, that they cannot utilize today. Today's Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) systems work strictly within a wavelength range in the fiber called the "C" Band, and cannot transmit information through the longer-wavelength "L" Band.

DWDM enables service providers to transmit different wavelengths -- or colors -- of light on the same fiber strand, thereby increasing the fiber's bandwidth. By opening up this previously untapped wavelength band, this new amplifier will allow carriers to eventually double the number of wavelengths they send through a fiber and enable DWDM to work on a wider range of fiber types. The WaveStar L-band Amplifier is expected to be commercially available by June 2000.

Driving the Industry Toward Terabit Networking

In a separate release issued today, Lucent's Bell Labs announced the first successful transmission of 40 gigabits (billion bits) per second of information on 40 individual wavelengths in a DWDM system. The Bell Labs' prototype system was able to transmit 1.6 terabits (trillion bits) per second of information over 400 kilometers on a single strand of Lucent's TrueWave(R) RS optical fiber.

"The introduction of the WaveStar L-Band Amplifier and the ability to transmit 40-gigabit signals over a record-setting number of wavelengths will enable Lucent to develop the super-capacity systems that our customers crave," added Butters. "We brought our 80-channel system from concept to market in less than 15 months, and we expect these new technologies to enable us to bring industry-leading systems supporting 160 channels -- and beyond -- to market even faster."

Tunable Lasers Will Make Optical Data Networking More Affordable

In its continuing effort to dramatically drive down the cost of optical data networking systems, Lucent also is unveiling its new WaveStar Tunable Laser that will enable service providers to reduce inventory and operations costs by more than 90 percent.

Since today's lasers can transmit only one pre-set color of light each, a service provider needs to maintain one spare laser for each wavelength being transmitted by its DWDM system. For instance, a carrier using an 80-channel DWDM system needs to purchase 80 spare lasers to keep in reserve. But just as radios can be tuned to receive multiple radio stations, each of Lucent's WaveStar Tunable Lasers can be tuned to transmit up to 20 different wavelengths -- or colors -- of light. Therefore, the same carrier will need to keep only four spare lasers in inventory.

Lucent expects to be the first company to bring tunable lasers to market for DWDM systems, with commercial availability scheduled for mid 2000.

Integrating the Speed of Optics With the Power of Data Networking

At this week's SuperComm '99 show in Atlanta, Ga., Lucent will showcase its industry-leading optical networking technology with Ascend Communications' GX 550 "Smart" Core Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switches. Ascend's GX 550 will interface directly with Lucent's WaveStar OLS 400G long-haul DWDM system, enabling multiservice packet-based ATM traffic to travel directly over the optical layer of the network at speeds up to 400 gigabits per second (Gb/s).

The combination of technologies from Lucent, the leading provider of DWDM equipment, and Ascend, the leading provider of wide area networking (WAN) solutions for network service providers, will provide carriers with a more simplified network architecture and lower operational costs by eliminating the need for Synchronous Optical NETworking (SONET) or Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) signals and equipment.