AT&T TURNS UP COAST-TO-COAST OC-192 IP BACKBONE
AT&T upgraded key routes of its IP backbone to OC-192, effectively quadrupling the capacity of its backbone. The coast-to-coast OC-192 deployment forms two paths across the US, connecting the cities of Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, and San Francisco.  AT&T also announced plans to double its current Web hosting capacity with the construction of eight Internet Data centers, at least one internationally.  The company currently has 13 Internet data centers operational, representing more than 1 million square feet of Web hosting space.  http://www.ipservices.att.com/backbone/
AT&T, January 9, 2001

ADVANCED RADIO TELECOM OFFERS 100 MBPS WIRELESS ACCESS AT $1,000 / MONTH
Advanced Radio Telecom announced a 100 Mbps burstable wireless Internet access service priced at $1,000 per month, in certain US markets.  The company claims it will be able to provision its BroadStream Internet Service in as fast as 10 working days, and it will offer a service level agreement that provides for 100% availability.  http://www.ipsp.com/
Advanced Radio Telecom, January 9, 2001

LEVEL 3 AND FLAG TO BUILD 3.8 TBPS PAN-ASIA UNDERSEA NETWORK
Level 3 Communications and FLAG Telecom announced plans to build a pan-Asia submarine cable system that will connect Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.  The undersea system will include Level 3's previously announced eastern link connecting Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, and a new western link that FLAG will build to connect Hong Kong, Korea and Japan.   The Hong Kong-Japan-South Korea cable is designed to provide optimal capacity at 3.84Tbps carried by 64 wavelengths at 10Gbps on six fiber pairs.  Level 3 and FLAG Telecom will each have three fiber pairs.  Alcatel serves as the prime contractor for the $900 million system. http://www.alcatel.com/vpr/?body=/latestnews/09012001uk
Alcatel, January 9, 2001

SPIRENT ADDS TESTING SUPPORT FOR CISCO'S SPATIAL REUSE PROTOCOL
Spirent Communications added support for Cisco's Spatial Reuse Protocol (SRP) to its Adtech AX/4000 platform.  SRP is a new media access layer (MAC) protocol developed by Cisco Systems and available in their DPT line of products. It utilizes a dual counter-rotating, ring-based network topology, where both rings carry data and control messages, concurrently, to maximize bandwidth. For each data packet the correlating control packet is sent on a counter-rotating ring. SRP is an open technology embraced by multiple system and silicon vendors.
http://www.spirentcom.com/
Spirent Communications, January 9, 2001

• Cisco Systems announced its Dynamic Packet Transport (DPT) architecture for packet optimized metro optical networks in February 1999.  Instead of the timeslots and provisioned connections used in TDM structures, DPT employs statistical multiplexing to maximize the ring's carrying capacity.   The architecture uses SONET/SDH framing and can be run transparently over dark fiber, DWDM systems and SONET/SDH rings.  http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/servpro/solutions/optical/dpt.html

TELICA ENHANCES ITS CONVERGENCE SWITCHING PLATFORM
Telica, a start-up based in Marlboro, Mass., announced an Element Manager and a Billing System for its Plexus 9000 next generation switching platform.  Telica's Plexus 9000 integrates switching, termination and gateway functions into a single box.  The new PlexView Element Manager and the PlexView Billing System uses a client/server offload architecture to handle service provisioning, billing, performance monitoring and fault management processing.
http://www.telica.com/news/0192001.shtml
Telica, January 9, 2001

• Key features of the Telica Plexus 9000 include a 15 Gbps switching fabric (with a latency of only 1.2 ms); integrated SS7 signaling, call control and switching; Class 4/5 baseline features; transport and protocol transparency (IMT, SS7, ISDN PRI, ATM and IP); hot-swappable components and fault-tolerant software and firmware; and a high-density footprint (180,000+ protected DS-0's per rack). In ILEC networks, the platform could be located beside or behind a Class 5 switch within an end office to perform voice and data service optimization. CLECs could place it in a central office co-location cage to serve as a Class 5 substitute, performing full termination and switching of data calls.  
  
• Last June, Redback Networks formed a strategic alliance with and made an equity investment in Telica.  Telica was co-founded by John St. Amand and Charles (Chuck) Bates, both formerly with Dynamics Research Corporation (DRC).