News Burst: Lucent to build BT backbone

Lucent Technologies Thursday announced that it has received a letter of award from BT for a five-year agreement to build an optical network in the UK that will form the backbone of BT's next-generation Global Transport Network (GTN), the company said. Both parties expect an agreement to be concluded in early December.

At a capacity of one trillion bits per second, it will be the UK's first commercial terabit (one million Mbit/s) network -- with the ability to transmit the data contained on nearly 200 CD-ROMs per second. It will ensure that the UK is well-placed to play in the global digital economy and enable BT to meet its customers' escalating demand for broadband communications.

Under the terms of the letter of award, Lucent would provide BT with its WaveStar optical networking solutions, including Lucent's DWDM (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing) systems. The network would give provide BT the capability to carry incoming and outgoing capacity from its UK terminated sub-sea cable network.