Astral Point Selects Agere Chip

ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR.A), the world leader incommunications components, today announced that Astral Point Communications,Inc. has selected Agere's programmable 6.8 gigabit-per-second (Gbit/s)backplane transceiver chip and synchronous optical network (SONET) overheadpath processor for Astral Point's ON 7000 Integrated Optical Transport Node.The ON 7000 combines SONET OC-192 transport with dense wavelength divisionmultiplexing (DWDM) in a single platform for metropolitan area networkingapplications, and includes recently announced long-haul capability advancesthat support regional interoffice networking as well.Agere's ORT8850L transceiver is a field-programmable system chip (FPSC) thatprovides networking equipment designers with proven backplane driver andreceiver technology and customizable logic for transporting various trafficprotocols over SONET metro- and wide-area networks such as Internet protocol(IP), asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and packet over SONET (POS). Thedevice incorporates eight transceiver channels, each operating at 850megabits per second (Mbits/s) in standard cell logic, and provides up to200K programmable gates for Agere-supplied or customer intellectualproperty."We designed our ON 7000 transport node to help carriers build out theirmetropolitan SONET rings and regional interoffice networks while speedingthe deployment of new services," said Bruce Miller, executive vice presidentof technology and advanced development at Astral Point. "Agere's backplanetransceiver and overhead processor chips equip our system with flexibilityand performance so we can help carriers expand their networks and increaseservices while holding down investment and operating costs."Agere Systems Astral Point Communications Inc.