Alcatel Unveils Metro Ethernet Products

PARIS -- Alcatel (Paris: CGEP.PA and NYSE: ALA) today announced that it has strengthened its industry-leading Metro Ethernet solution portfolio with the addition of two new products that combine Ethernet technology with MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching), enabling service providers to improve the quality of service delivery to business and residential customers. The Alcatel 7450 Ethernet Service Switch (ESS) and 1662 Packet Ring Switch (PRS) increase the reliability and scalability of metro networks, allowing service providers to leverage Ethernet's ubiquity and low-cost to reliably deliver profitable broadband services.

TeliaSonera - the leading provider in the Nordic and Baltic Nations - will use the Alcatel 7450 Ethernet Service Switch to build its next generation metro network. The service provider will deploy the 7450 ESS to expand its MPLS network into the metro from the Service Edge. This Alcatel solution allows TeliaSonera to deliver scalable, reliable and predictable Ethernet services with guaranteed Service Level Agreements (SLAs.)

Consumer and enterprise customers are embracing more bandwidth-intensive and quality-sensitive voice, data and video services. Carriers want to deliver those capabilities with the simplicity of Ethernet but also require the ability to guarantee service level agreements for mission-critical services. These products arrive just as service providers want to expand Ethernet Metropolitan and Wide Area Network (MAN and WAN) services in a reliable, scalable and cost effective way.

"Carriers continue to see Ethernet in the metro as a strategic investment," said Roz Roseboro, Program Director at RHK. "Alcatel's approach, which extends service capabilities into the metro, will help service providers deliver higher value Ethernet solutions."

The Alcatel 7450 ESS and 1662 PRS are able to leverage the bandwidth and economics of Ethernet, but also provide the necessary Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics combined with the stability and scalability of MPLS. As a result, service providers can immediately begin to deliver point-to-point and multi-point Ethernet Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and use Ethernet as the access to IP VPNs and High-Speed Internet. In addition, as an increasing number of telecom service providers are introducing video, they can use the 7450 ESS and 1662 PRS to more efficiently aggregate that video traffic, ensuring that services such as video-on-demand and broadcast TV meet their customers' expectations.

The Alcatel 7450 Ethernet Service Switch is unique in that it has been designed and optimized for delivering Ethernet services with Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Developed from IP/MPLS baseline hardware and software architecture, the 7450 ESS improves the predictability of network and Ethernet service behavior. In contrast to existing Metro Ethernet switches, the 7450 ESS control plane scales to support thousands of simultaneous Ethernet services while maintaining the ability to recover from outages in less than 50 milliseconds using MPLS Fast Re-Route.

The 7450 ESS features 40 Gb/s slots and a programmable forwarding plane that enables any feature to be delivered at any speed on any port, including per-service QoS. A full range of Ethernet and Packet over SONET/SDH interfaces, including high density Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gb/s Ethernet enables service providers to reach more customers at a lower cost.

The service orientation and optimization of the Alcatel 7450 ESS, combined with Alcatel's unique service-aware OA&M (Operations, Administration and Maintenance) toolkit, speeds provisioning and troubleshooting. When combined with the service templates and provisioning wizards of the Alcatel 5620 management solution, service providers can now improve their time to market for new revenue services.

The Alcatel 1662 Packet Ring Switch uses MPLS-enabled Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) technology to deliver point-to-point and multipoint Ethernet services with end-to-end QoS across multiple rings or a mesh network. With MPLS, service providers can define bandwidth profiles for each customer service, matching QoS parameters to ensure a range of SLAs.

The 1662 PRS provides cost-effective Ethernet aggregation and is also fully compatible with existing SDH transport infrastructure, allowing service providers to introduce sophisticated Ethernet services with any generation of SDH equipment. Service providers can also benefit from the operational efficiencies provided by the Alcatel 1350 management suite to ensure rapid service provisioning and user-friendly management.

"Alcatel is focused on enabling operators to deliver profitable services, and the addition of the 7450 ESS and 1662 PRS extends that goal into Metro Ethernet service delivery," said Michel Rahier, Chief Operating Officer of Alcatel's fixed communications activities. "Our comprehensive portfolio now supports all Metro Ethernet service delivery types, allowing us to meet diverse carrier needs. With the addition of these two new products to the Alcatel portfolio, service providers can increase the value of the Ethernet and Broadband services they sell, improve the service reliability, scalability and predictability of those services, and continue to decrease the complexity and cost of service operations."

Alcatel SA