Alcatel-Lucent touts new optical vision

Looking to recapture the hearts of the optical community, Alcatel-Lucent is getting set to launch a new optical core technology next week in an online press conference.

Other than saying the new technology "significantly cuts the cost of transporting dramatically increasing volumes of traffic with exceptional reliability," details are scarce at this point.

One possibility as suggested in a Light Reading blog posting is that the new technology could be the company's move into the Optical Transport Network (OTN) switching market segment or possibly the unveiling of a vision to converge the packet and optical domains.   

Although Alcatel has traditionally dominated the optical networking market, its empire has been continually picked apart by aggressive Chinese vendors such as Huawei and ZTE.

One potential area where this proposed optical core technology could resonate is in the 100 Gbps optical and 100 GigE domains where service providers such as Verizon are looking to upgrade additional network routes to 100 Gbps in the coming year.

Guess we'll find out next Thurs, Jan. 21.

For more:
- see Alcatel-Lucent's media advisory here
- see Light Reading's analysis

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