LONDON and BARCELONA -- Marconi Corporation plc has announced the general availability of its optical multiservice, metro 16-64 platform at the Transmission Network Strategies trade show in Barcelona. This fulfils the initial rollout plan unveiled at the Cebit exhibition in March this year and enhances further Marconi's leadership and innovation in optical networking. Marconi's new optical multiservice platform provides carriers with a flexible, cost-effective platform to deliver increasing volumes of data services, without compromising existing revenue-generating legacy services.

The Marconi multiservice metro 16-64 platform is designed for flexible deployment in a range of applications. It is a high-density, full-connectivity, service delivery platform as well as a compact, high-capacity traffic aggregation and switching device. It allows operators to support increasing levels of data traffic seamlessly alongside existing voice and other services while substantially reducing network costs.

Marconi's multiservice metro 16-64 is a highly modular, scalable platform that combines multiple line rate, Ethernet transport/switching and scalable, fully non-blocking cross-connect capability in a single platform. A unique dual data and Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) bus architecture effectively future proofs the platform and allows easy migration to higher density, multiple data services on a single platform as demand emerges, enabling carriers to plan their networks more effectively. The Marconi multiservice metro 16-64 seamlessly integrates with Marconi's optical core and metro Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) solutions and is first to offer new ITU-approved data enabling capabilities -- fully standardised Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) and Virtual Concatenation (VCAT) solutions. These technologies allow carriers to offer variable bandwidth services to customers, making their network more flexible and cost effective.

The Marconi multiservice metro 16-64 is currently being shipped to customers for trials and is a brand new platform that forms the bedrock of Marconi's next-generation, optical Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) portfolio.

"SDH remains at the heart of virtually all public operator networks and we, in common with most industry observers, believe that SDH will continue to play a major role for many years to come," said John Wanklyn, EVP Product Marketing for Marconi Corporation plc. Telecoms analyst group RHK recently ranked Marconi market share leader in the European SDH Aggregation market.

Marconi Corp. plc