Alcatel-Lucent further strengthens its optical cross-connect portfolio

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced the global availability of Release 9.1 of its market-leading 1675 LambdaUnite MultiService Switch (MSS). Featuring enhanced wideband cross-connect switching and advanced control plane intelligence; this new release provides operators with increased network and service availability thus minimizing their total cost of network ownership.

“There is significant interest on the part of network operators to improve network resiliency and speed up provisioning of high bandwidth services to the point of making them dynamic,” said Ron Kline, Research Director, Optical Networks at industry analyst firm Ovum RHK. “To that end, the use of ASON/GMPLS control plane technology is rapidly moving from test bed and research applications to general deployment in carrier networks.”

Furthermore, the Alcatel-Lucent 1675 LambdaUnite MSS Release 9.1 brings considerable advancements in support of Automatically Switched Optical Network (ASON*)-based networks, thus addressing operators’ increasing needs to incorporate control plane intelligence. As ASON is entering a more sophisticated application stage in multi-vendor network environments, the standardized external network-to-network interfaces introduced with this new release give operators an unprecedented freedom when running multi-vendor ASON/Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS**) networks. In addition, these interfaces further optimize the use of network resources as optical connections are provisioned in a faster and more dynamic way, strengthening traffic protection.

“With today’s announcement, Alcatel-Lucent further confirms its continued commitment to adding intelligence into its optical solutions,” said Romano Valussi, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s optics activities. “The enhancements to our 1675 LambdaUnite MSS product will support services providers in their competitive network transformation.”

The enhancements to the 1675 LambdaUnite further strengthen Alcatel-Lucent’s optical cross connects portfolio, including the 1678 Metro Core Connect, and its overall ASON/GMPLS capabilities. According to Ovum RHK, Alcatel-Lucent is the global and regional market leader in the optical switch segment. In 2006, Alcatel-Lucent had a 43% market share globally with leading positions in EMEA (56%), North America (41%), Asia-Pacific (29%) and Central and Latin America (45%).