ACTON, Mass. -- Équipe Communications Corporation announced today the successful trial and demonstration of its Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) to Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Network Interworking Function (IWF) for it's flagship product, the Équipe 3200 (É3200). This marks the first time that a vendor has successfully shown the non-disruptive migration of existing Frame Relay and ATM traffic onto a packet-based MPLS network in a mixed vendor environment. The demonstration was staged using equipment from Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR), Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) at an analyst event held at the company's headquarters recently."There is no question that the largest near-term market for new-generation networking equipment is the RBOCs' national data build-outs," said Tom Nolle, president, CIMI Corporation. "These represent a total of nearly ten billion dollars in aggregate equipment buys over the next five years. For regulatory and efficiency reasons, these networks will require the efficient linking of frame relay and ATM services and infrastructure with MPLS, and the only vendor I've seen offer a convincing demonstration of flow-through service creation and assurance between MPLS and ATM devices has been Équipe. There are a lot of vendors claiming to interwork ATM and MPLS, but only one that has demonstrated real end-to-end control, management, and data integration, and Équipe is that one."Équipe's IWF capability on the É3200 allows carriers to translate data traffic from ATM cells to MPLS packets. This technology is a critical prerequisite to evolving carrier core networks to MPLS while growing revenue and market share in the frame relay and ATM data services markets. ILECs that can efficiently evolve their networks to support inter-LATA data services will have a distinct strategic business advantage over the next 10 years. Équipe Communications Corp.