BONN, Germany -- At the Systems 2004 trade show opening in Munich yesterday, T-Com, the fixed line division of Deutsche Telekom, announced its new "EthernetConnect" range of business to business ethernet over optical services. Lucent is delivering equipment for the "EthernetConnect"product family for delivering Ethernet services, combining the speed and reliability of fast optical backbones with proven Ethernet technology that is the standard in local area networks. Through its "EthernetConnect" service, T-Com is able to offer fast Ethernet service at speeds of 10, 50 and 100 megabits per second (Mbit/s), seamlessly connecting Local Area Networks(LANs) at customer locations throughout Germany. Using a standardized Ethernet "socket" installed by T-Com on the customer premises, company customers can connect directly to T-Com's state-of-the-art SDH fiber network. There are no investment costs for WAN routers and the operating costs are reduced because maintenance and administration are less expensive.

The high-capacity, high speed optical multiplexers supplied by Lucent can be equipped with Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) interfaces, enabling T-Com to do capacity upgrades to GigE for its customers at any time. In several pilot projects, T-Com is already installing GigE in customer locations. "EthernetConnect" is based on T-Com's high-speed SDH platform. In the past, the fast Ethernet lines mainly used Lucent's lower-capacity optical multiplexers. With the expansion Lucent´s optical networking portfolio, higher-capacity systems like theWavestar(r) ADM 16/1, the Metropolis(r) ADM Multiservice Mux (universal and compact shelves), Wavestar(r) TDM10G and LambdaUnite(r) MultiService Service Switch(MSS), are all able to be equipped with GigE plug-in cards,increasing transmission capacity in 150-Mbit/s steps to a maximum of 1 Gbit/s.

"Gigabit Ethernet allows you to better exploit existing optical infrastructure, and the combination of fast Ethernet and GigE allows service providers like T-Com to offer a variety of new services and cut down costs", said Rainer Fechner, vice president and general manager, Optical Transport and Cross-Connect Systems, Lucent Technologies. "By focusing on the design and development of standardized interfaces, Lucent has committed to providing T-Com with products that are equipped today for the services of tomorrow."

Lucent Technologies Inc.