MUNICH -- At ECOC 2002 in Copenhagen Siemens ICN will present how transmission properties and high-speed switching technologies presented for 160-Gb/s OTDM systems, can prove to be cost-effective in point-to-point link transmission and with the help of time-domain routing capabilities become a commercial reality. The increasing demand for high bandwidth services over digital subscriber lines, the future deployment of high quality video services and the take-up of fibre to the home will lead to increased use of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) at 10Gb/s and use of higher channel rate systems at 40Gb/s and 160Gb/s, where cost effective. Today, optical transmission systems are typically running at data rates of 2.5Gb/s or 10Gb/s per channel. Systems with a channel data rate of 40Gb/s have already been announced as a product. Potentially, next generation time division multiplexed (TDM) systems may run at 160-Gb/s line rate, which presently can only be achieved by employing optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) techniques. There are two key criteria for 160-Gb/s OTDM systems to become a commercial reality. First, they need to prove economically beneficial in point-to-point link transmission compared to state of the art 10- and 40-Gb/s systems. Second, 160-Gb/s systems should comply with a flexible all-optical network and offer time-domain routing capabilities. Siemens ICN will prove that 160-Gb/s transmission properties and switching technologies are enabling efficient point-to-point transmission and time-domain optical networking capabilities at 160Gb/s. Siemens Information and Communications Networks Inc.