Lightpath picks Nortel for DWDM

Lightpath, a New York-area CLEC, is deploying DWDM gear from Nortel as the foundation for new service provisioning across its fiber-optic network.

The Cablevision Systems subsidiary and fifth largest facilities-based LEC in New York State is using Nortel’s OPTera 5200 system to evolve its existing SONET backbone into a DWDM core that can deliver multipoint metro Ethernet, storage-area networking and managed router services. Lightpath currently offers point-to-point Ethernet and managed VPN services on its 110,000 fiber-mile network, company officials say.

The network upgrade will initially support 32 protected OC-48 lambdas, and OC-192 wavelengths next year, says Brian Fabiano, senior vice president of network services for Lightpath. Lightpath’s Optical Network is currently comprised of 419 SONET rings.

 Lightpath is deploying 15 OPTera 5200s across three states. The CLEC also considered gear from Tellabs, Cisco, Internet Photonics, Scientific Atlanta/Luminous, Fujitsu and Lucent for the buildout.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Lightpath had 2002 revenue of $160 million and a capital expense budget of $120 million. The CLEC provisions more than 140,000 access lines and 18,000 Internet circuits to over 4,000 business subscribers.

Separately, Nortel unveiled a product for cable operators targeting schools, local businesses and other enterprises.

The OPTera Metro 5000 CWDM Enclosure is designed to delivering Gigabit Ethernet, storage connectivity, and other optical broadband services to customer premises. The system can aggregate multiple private CWDM optical channels from various customer premises over a single fiber pair.

The CWDM Enclosure can also be placed in basements of multi-tenant buildings to provide private, multi-protocol, optical wavelength services, Nortel says.

Pricing and availability of the product was not disclosed.

Meanhwile, Lightpath competitor Con Edison Communications tapped ADVA Optical Networking to provide equipment for a managed wavelength service. Con Ed will be installing ADVA’s FSP 3000 platform to support its PowerWave Wavelength Service for enterprises and service providers in the New York metro area. 

FSP 3000 will increase fiber capacity and support storage service transport as well, the companies said.

Con Ed Communications has a fiber network of more than 380 route miles that interconnects over 100 commercial buildings, and carrier POPs and COs. The service provider has already deployed two three-node rings with the FSP 3000, which carry Gigabit Ethernet and OC-12 applications up to 170 km.

The FSP supports TDM and DWDM to transport 256 applications over a single fiber pair at speeds between 8M bit/sec and 10G bit/sec. It supports point-to-point, linear add/drop, ring, and meshed network topologies of up to 10 nodes across distances up to 500 km without regeneration, ADVA says.