Alcatel’s Christy: ‘There’s no such thing as dumb pipes anymore’

Alcatel-Lucent made a flurry of product and customer announcements at NXTcomm today.

The news was introduced by Cindy Christy, the company’s president for North America, who pushed the themes of service and network transformation, and the industry’s move to “blended services.”

The product news ranged from access to core networking solutions.

On the access front, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled a North American version of Release 4.4 for the 7342 ISAM fiber-to-the-user product, a GPON solution. New with this release are quad port line cards (each of which can support up to 64 subscribers with 2.5gbps downstream and 1.25gbps upstream rates), doubling system capacity; support for the VoIP protocols SIP and H248; support for IGMPv3 for fast channel changing on IPTV service; and a new, compact multiple dwelling unit optical network terminal, adding to the company’s existing line of MDU ONTs. (News came out just last week that AT&T has selected both Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson for its GPON deployment. In other GPON customer news, Alcatel-Lucent announced today that Connexion Technologies is using the 7342 ISAM for residential and hospitality applications, and, separately, that Birmingham, Ala.-based service provider Momentum is using its GPON gear.)

A new release of Alcatel-Lucent’s 7330 ISAM fiber to the node platform includes a 48-port VDSL2 line card with bonding and a POTS line termination card.

On the transport side, the company has added ROADM functionality to its 1850 Transport Service Switch (TSS), which can now switch at up to 3gbps. These enhancements target such applications as Ethernet access networks for business services, mobile backhaul and Ethernet in the first mile.

And Release 9.1 of the 1675 LambdaUnite MultiService Switch (MSS) offers enhanced wideband cross-connect switching; advanced control plane intelligence; and improved support to automatically switched optical network (ASON).

Finally, the company has added to its IP/MPLS management portfolio with the launched of the 5650 Control Plane Assurance Manager, which does visualization, validation and troubleshooting for the IP control plane. The product was created to address two of the most significant challenges facing operators today, according to Alcatel-Lucent, which are service failures that impact service providers’ ability to meet SLAs, and resource scaling as IP/MPLS networks expand.

On the professional services front, the company introduced an educational Service Routing Certification program, which includes lab activity and coursework in the areas of network routing, triple-play routing and service routing architecture.

Alcatel-Lucent also said it will oversee the maintenance of optical and transport equipment in Global Crossing's network. During the press conference, Christy indicated there is a trend by service providers to outsource many of their services.

But Christy said the most important trend in telecom today is the move to blended services, which she said Alcatel-Lucent surveys show customers are willing to pay more for (as opposed to simply bundled services, which translate into customer discounts that drive down service provider revenue). That’s why blended services are a key theme among the demos in the company’s booth this week. Blended multiscreen applications, enhanced triple play, video on demand, mobile IP with guaranteed QoS, carrier Ethernet and managed VPNs, community services with IMS, business productivity with IMS, targeted content services (for which advertisers can deliver ads based on user-specific information) and WiMAX for collaborative enterprise applications are being demoed in Alcatel-Lucent’s booth (No. 3922).

Yet, despite all the focus on applications and the user, Christy said the network remains of key importance, so as service provider customers move to IP to support new services, Alcatel-Lucent is also providing them with the tools to leverage what they already have. The move to new services, she added, also requires operators to drive service intelligence across the network and to ensure the network offers the reliability and resilience that will translate into delivering good customer experiences.

“There’s no such thing as dumb pipes anymore,” said Christy. “They’re all smart pipes.”

Alcatel-Lucent www.alcatel-lucent.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines