Ericsson joins T-MPLS packet-optical crowd

Packet-optical transport has been one of the hottest and most actively debated telecom technology segments of the last 18 months. The initial fascination with provider backbone transport (PBT, also called provider backbone bridging-traffic engineering in the standards world) has faded a bit, as transport-multiprotocol label switching (T-MPLS, also called MPLS-transport profile for standards purposes) has picked up steam. Now, after companies such as Fujitsu, Ciena, Tellabs, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel Networks, Alcatel-Lucent and others have been busy parsing out acronym advantages, Ericsson is finally set to join the packet-optical market with a new platform.

The company's SPT 2700 supports time division multiplexing, carrier Ethernet, and wave division multiplexing. It also comes at a time when most carriers are still preparing their packet-optical platform convergence projects, so there's plenty of time for Ericsson to have an impact. Ericsson supports T-MPLS and will support the related MPLS-TP standard, but also will consider the PBB-TE standard. Ericsson said the system, armed initially with 320 Gbps packet switching capacity, will be available in the first quarter next year. The vendor claims to be in trial with three carriers right now.

As an aside, Light Reading is calling the whole packet-optical transport system market by the acronym P-OTS, not to be confused with POTS, for plain old telephone system, the original telecom acronym. Though, with multiple acronyms for PBT and T-MPLS, they may have the right idea re-purposing an existing one. Interestingly (or maybe not), the online Free Dictionary [1] lists a bunch of different possible meanings for POTS. My favorite (that won't be spam-filtered): Protector of the Small. Now, there's a noble goal for the packet-optical crowd to work toward.

For more:
- Light Reading Europe reports [2]