Alcatel-Lucent Unveils META

BERLIN -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced its Mobile Evolution Transport Architecture (META), the industry’s first and most comprehensive architecture for profitably evolving mobile networks from TDM to all-IP. As demand for multimedia services is increasing*, the META architecture enables mobile network operators (CDMA/EV-DO, GSM/UMTS and WiMAX)to aggressively expand the scale of their networks to more efficiently and cost effectively support the transport of voice and data traffic from the cell site to the core.

META supports the most diverse set of transport alternatives to enable the evolution to all-IP across any media (copper, fiber, wireless). META also provides for dramatic network simplification with integrated management across fixed and mobile technology domains delivering significant operating expense (OPEX) reductions of as much as 44%**. META bridges the bandwidth and revenue gap, enabling providers to increase ARPU in the face of rapid subscriber growth.

META leverages Alcatel-Lucent’s leadership in fixed, mobile, network management and services domains, to deliver an evolutionary approach that enables providers to leverage existing infrastructure—ATM, TDM, DSL/GPON, IP/MPLS, SONET (including pseudowire technology), for the profitable migration to all-IP. This initiative is the first major architecture announced since the merger of former Alcatel and Lucent Technologies.

“With the dramatic surge in mobile subscribers from today’s nearly 3 billion to more than 5 billion within 3 to 5 years, and the ramp up of data traffic for new multimedia services, mobile operators face a major challenge. META provides our customers with a staged evolution to an all-IP infrastructure while significantly reducing the complexity and cost of their transport network, ” said Michel Rahier, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s carrier business activity.

To fulfill the promise of META, Alcatel-Lucent also is announcing three new cell site aggregation products that support the diversity of “first mile” access types, while greatly simplifying the aggregation and backhaul of broadband traffic. Alcatel-Lucent’s 9500 Microwave Packet Radio (MPR), 1850 Transport Service Switch (TSS)-5, and 7705 Service Aggregation Router (SAR) enable the aggressive and profitable evolution from existing microwave, TDM and ATM infrastructures to all-IP.

"With these three new cell-site aggregation products, Alcatel-Lucent can support mobile transport evolution to all-IP from cell site to core for CDMA or UMTS access, and across microwave, copper, or fiber backhaul networks, “ said Patrick Donegan, senior analyst at Heavy Reading. “META is one of the industry's most comprehensive end to end frameworks for mobile transport evolution to all-IP supported by management integration across wireline and wireless technology domains and designed to deliver the simplified management, end to end OAM, and QoS that mobile service providers require."

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU)