Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU) today announced that it has been awarded contracts to supply high-capacity optical networking systems to expand China Telecom's optical backbone network.
The contracts, awarded as part of China Telecom's National Transmission Backbone Expansion Project, will take advantage of Lucent's 10Gb/s Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing(DWDM) systems. These are the first deployments of this technology in China Telecom's optical backbone network.
Under the terms of the contracts, Lucent will provide its WaveStar OLS 1.6T high-capacity DWDM system to build a reliable optical transmission network spanning over 2,400 kilometers across China. With the expansion, China Telecom will be able to offer better services for over 4 million broadband users in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces.
Developed by Bell Labs, Lucent's R&D arm, the WaveStar OLS 1.6T system is an ultra-high-capacity DWDM system that leverages both the "C-Band" and "L-Band" spectrum to provide up to 160 10-Gb/s wavelengths for a total capacity of 1.6 Tb/s on one fiber – the equivalent of transmitting 320 million one-page e-mails per second. It is based on an open architecture that enables it to operate in multi-vendor environments and helps carriers deliver high-bandwidth services to their customers.
The Lucent WaveStar OLS 1.6T, has more than 9,000 nodes commercially deployed worldwide.