Lucent Technologies has signed a multimillion dollar agreement with Japan Telecom (JT) to deploy the industry's first high-capacity, all-optical switch – the Lucent WaveStar LambdaRouter – in a high-speed optical network that connects major metropolitan areas across Japan.
This contract represents the first commercial deployment of an all-optical switch in the Japanese communications network. Lucent plans to begin installing the systems in November with completion scheduled for the first quarter of next fiscal year.
Japan Telecom will use the LambdaRouter's intelligent optical-networking capability, which supports the Automatic Switched Transport Network (ASTN) utilizing Generalized Multi Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS). ASTN will enable the customer to bring new services to market, decrease the amount of time to provision a service, improve network performance and reduce the overall costs of maintaining and operating networks.
The LambdaRouter is part of Lucent Technologies Service Intelligent Network Solutions. The LambdaRouter, designed by Bell Labs, includes two one-inch square sets of 256 microscopic mirrors, set on a silicon base. With the aid of sophisticated software, the mirrors are tilted to reflect, or direct, wavelengths from an incoming fiber to an outgoing fiber, thus eliminating the slow and power-consuming optical to electrical to optical (O-E-O) conversion, as done by conventional switches used in long-haul networks.