Alcatel Broadens 1696’s Horizons with ROADM

Alcatel has expanded the functionality of its 1696 Metro Span DWDM equipment by incorporating the ROADM technology of Tropic Networks, in which Alcatel announced an investment in this July.

According to David Waterhouse, vice president of product marketing for the optical networks division at Alcatel, the additional of the ROADM technology to its DWDM equipment brings new money savings to service providers because it enables carriers to remotely drop a wavelength and otherwise makes the optical network more flexible to configure.

Tropic’s Wavelength Tracker technology also lets carriers look at each wavelength and at the characteristics of those wavelengths at any point in the network without doing OEO conversion. “It let’s you manage WDM like a SONET network,” says Waterhouse.

Alcatel has more than 60 metro WDM customers around the world including wireline and wireless telcos, cablecos and others.

For those existing customers, upgrading to the ROADM functionality requires a new shelf to be installed as well as the Tropic management system.

Another new benefit of the new release of Alcatel’s 1696 Metro Span DWDM is the ability to reach more than 600km. The previous version of the 1696 had a reach of 200km. The extended reach is not a result of the ROADM functionality.

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