AT&T Pushes SonetAT&T Pushes Sonet

SAN ANTONIO -- AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) today announced two enhancements to the Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) service portfolio, which will allow both wholesale and retail business customers to better converge voice, data and video capabilities over Internet Protocol (IP)-enabled networks.

The two features -- Virtual Concatenation (VCAT) service and Arc Sub-ring service -- provide more efficient and flexible use of bandwidth so that businesses can quickly add, increase, mix and manage traffic flows across networks without being forced to add equipment or rearrange their existing services. AT&T is one of the first to announce a wide deployment of VCAT technology to support Ethernet services across metropolitan areas.

This is a significant benefit to financial institutions, government agencies or health care providers, which are dealing in real time with massive amounts of data and traffic across multiple locations. It is especially helpful for wireless operators and other wholesale customers that manage multiple SONET rings in a metro area and want to combine traffic with different speeds over a single link to achieve more efficient use of their existing fiber routes.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T)