|
Paris, August 23, 2007 — Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE:
ALU) has further strengthened its cooperation with Southern Cross by signing a
new contract to upgrade the landing stations of Southern Cross’ 28,900 km
submarine cable network. This new award follows the contract signed in 2001 for
the first upgrade of the Southern Cross network that went into service in
November 2000, providing Australasia with a fully protected direct link to the
U.S. mainland.
The network upgrade will provide further route diversity and capacity in the
Australasian region to maximize the benefits of broadband services to both
residential and business users. Alcatel-Lucent will upgrade the network’s ten
landing stations, which are located close to the major international hubs of
Sydney (Australia), Auckland (New Zealand), Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle
and Honolulu (the U.S) for ease of access.
The project will be rolled-out in two phases. The first phase will consist
in upgrading the existing 480 Gbit/s capacity up to 660 Gbit/s by the end of
the first quarter 2008 and the second phase will bring it up to 860 Gbit/s by
the end of 2008. The high scalability offered by Alcatel-Lucent’s optical
technology will also facilitate future upgrades up to 2.4 Tbit/s.
“By doubling the existing network capacity, this upgrade project will
help Southern Cross support the increased traffic generated by the rapid
adoption of ADSL2+ services and Ethernet-based applications with enhanced
flexibility and reliability,” stated Ross Pfeffer, Director of Sales and
Marketing at Southern Cross. “Alcatel-Lucent’s advanced optical technology will
assist us in taking a new significant step in addressing our end-user needs and
further protect our network to ensure maximum reliability.”
“The cooperation between Southern Cross and Alcatel-Lucent has proven
successful in several projects,” said Jean Godeluck, President of
Alcatel-Lucent’s submarine network activity. “Through our recognized expertise
in managing and deploying submarine cable networks, coupled with a top quality
and service support, we are well positioned to answer all our customer
needs.”
The Alcatel–Lucent solution will be based on both submarine and terrestrial
equipment. For the submarine section, Alcatel-Lucent will deploy its 1620 Light
Manager DWDM submarine line terminal. The landing stations will also be
upgraded with the Alcatel-Lucent 1675 LambdaUnite Multi-Service Switch (MSS),
offering advanced dynamic networking based on Automatically Switched Optical
Network (ASON*)/Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS**)
intelligent control plane for improvement of network availability,
strengthening of traffic protection and enabling accelerated optical connection
provisioning.
* About ASON
An automatically switched optical network (ASON) is a network based on a
technology enabling the automatic delivery of transport services. In an ASON
each network node should be equipped with a Control Plane. The Control Plane
sets up and releases connections and may restore a connection in case of a
failure.
** About GMPLS
Generalized MPLS (GMPLS) extends MPLS to provide the control plane
(signaling and routing) for devices that switch in different domains, including
wavelength, and fiber. This common control plane promises to simplify network
operation and management by automating end-to-end provisioning of connections,
managing network resources, and providing the level of QoS that is expected in
new, sophisticated applications.
About Southern Cross
Southern Cross Cable Network provides the fastest, most direct, and most secure
international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the heart of
the Internet in the USA. Commissioned in 2000 and 2001 as two diverse submarine
cables to the US the Southern Cross Network has been engineered until 2025 to
provide for the rapidly expanding capacity needs of high speed broadband. In
2001 total installed capacity was 80 Gbps, in January 2003 the total network
was expanded to 480 Gbps and by end-2008 total installed capacity will be 860
Gbps. Southern Cross can easily expand to 2.4Tbps of transmission capability by
installing more of the equipment that is being used for its current capacity
upgrade. With new technology continually improving potential transmission
speeds, the ultimate size of the Southern Cross Cable Network is likely to
considerably exceed 2.4 Tbps. Southern Cross Cable Network is owned by Telecom
NZ (50%), Singtel-Optus (40%) and Verizon Business (10%). The company has
offices in Bermuda, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington. For more information visit
Southern Cross at:  http://www.southerncrosscables.com
|
