Lucent lights up Verizon

As expected, Lucent has been awarded a three-year deal by Verizon to equip the carrier with next-generation SONET add/drop multiplexers.

As expected, Lucent has been awarded a three-year deal by Verizon to equip the carrier with next-generation SONET add/drop multiplexers.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Lucent is the second supplier announced for this buildout – Fujitsu was awarded a piece of this contract in June.

Verizon will deploy Lucent’s Metropolis DMX portfolio of metro optical networking products, and the LambdaUnite MultiService Switch for metro access traffic management. Metropolis DMX is an integrated SONET/Ethernet metro access multiplexer line that includes the DMX Access Multiplexer for central office and large enterprise applications; the DMXpress for customer premises applications; DMXtend for enterprise and loop access applications; and DMXplore to deliver next-generation SONET services to the customer’s premises.

Lucent says the Verizon deal represents the first bundled sale of all four DMX products.

LambdaUnite bridges metro networks and high-speed optical core networks connecting cities to long-haul public networks. The product enables service providers to upgrade their networks to 40G bit/sec and deliver Gigabit Ethernet services, Lucent says.

LambdaUnite supports in-service upgrades from 160G bit/sec to 320G bit/sec and 640G bit/sec, and mesh restoration capabilities.

Deployment of the Lucent products is currently underway, according to Lucent.

Analysts say Lucent beat out Cisco, Tellabs and Nortel for this data-over-SONET piece of Verizon’s next-gen optical buildout.

Verizon may not be done, however. The carrier says it will use several vendors in its next-gen metro SONET buildout, and UBS Warburg expects Nortel to win the next piece, possibly by year-end.