DSL: Will phantom channels become real deployments?

Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs has announced it has achieved a data rate of 300 megabits-per-second (Mbps) over 400m using digital subscriber line (DSL) technology. 

Alcatel-Lucent is promoting its DSL Phantom Mode technology as a complement to fibre-to-the-x (FTTx) technology. Operators can use the technology to continue to extend services offerings to existing DSL subscribers as they roll out FTTx over the next decade or more.

But one analyst believes the technology could take years to commercialise and questions whether the announcement is not sending a wrong message to the industry by providing an alternative to fibre.

“The investment required to upgrade DSL is quite small”

Stefaan Vanhastel, Alcatel-Lucent

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OFC/NFOEC 2010: Technical paper highlights

At this year’s OFC/NFOEC, to be held on March 21-25, all the main themes driving optical networking are represented:  40 and 100Gbps transmission, coherent detection, photonic integration, and the latest in optical access such as WDM-PON.

Here is a sample of some of the noteworthy papers.

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Optical core switching tops 4 Terabit-per-second.

After the launch of Alcatel-Lucent's 1870 TTS optical core switch, three experts comment.

Event:

Alcatel-Lucent has launched its 1870 Transport Tera Switch (TTS) that has a switch capacity of 4 Terabits-per-second (Tbps). The platform switches and grooms traffic at 1Gbps granularity while supporting lightpaths up to 100Gbps.

“It is designed to address the explosion of traffic in core networks, driven by video and the move to cloud computing among others,” says Alberto Valsecchi, vice president of marketing, optics activities at Alcatel-Lucent.

The 1870 TTS supports next-generation Optical Transport Network (OTN), carrier Ethernet and SONET/SDH protocols, as well as generalized multiprotocol label switching/ automatically switched optical network(GMPLS/ ASON) control plane technology to enable network management and traffic off-load between the IP core and optical layers.

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It [the 1870 TTS]  is designed to address the explosion of traffic in core networks"

Alberto Valsecchi, Alcatel-Lucent

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