GENEVA, Switzerland -- The ITU announces that its Telecommunication Standardization Sector has reached agreement on new global standards for equipment and management of the next generation optical network. The new standards support carrier-grade ultra-high capacity transport networks capable of supporting fully transparent wavelength services."These new Recommendations provide telecommunication equipment manufacturers with the necessary tools to produce interoperable products, allowing carriers to build and manage ultra-high capacity optical networks", said Peter Wery, Chairman of ITU-T Study Group 15.In particular, they support efficient transport of popular data protocols such as Ethernet and Fibre Channel, together with other wideband and broadband services including SDH/SONET, ATM, Frame Relay, Audio/Video, and IP based services. They also specify detailed equipment functions to support performance monitoring, fault isolation, and alarming, including support for optically transparent subnetworks. The optical transport network (OTN) series of standards facilitate end-to-end connectivity between optical transport elements in a global network. “The concept of a ‘one-size-fits-all ’ network is simply no longer viable,” adds Wery.An important new feature provided by these standards is the ability to combine multiple client signals within a wavelength to allow maximum utilization and cost effectiveness of transport capacity while still allowing switching at the OTN service rates of 2.5, 10, and 40 Gigabits per second. These new standards complement the Optical Transport Network (OTN) interface standards agreed last February by providing the equipment and management specifications necessary for vendors to provide inter-operable solutions.Optical networking continues to be a multi-billion dollar business sector satisfying the unceasing demand for more transport capacity for data, video and voice traffic. According to Wery, as applications have become more complex and demand increases, “the standards for ultra-high capacity transport networks will be in place to allow the development of unforeseen services that no doubt will further increase the demand for network bandwidth.”International Telecommunication Union (ITU)