Host: Now, as a supplier to the carriers, Alcatel-Lucent has a role somewhat in the kind of in the background but what's going to convince the carriers all to work together to create this seamless reality?
Guest: Well, there are a number of standards being created today. There's a very strong conversation on IMS, the IP Multi-media Subsystem, and virtually what have there got to be? About 300 carriers around the world all working on that technology and piece parts of it as they come to market. So I think there really is a heartbeat inside the industry to be able to migrate the networks and their performance to be able to meet those standards and deliver wonderful packaged and converged solutions to enterprises.
Host: Can you put some numbers to the kinds of speeds and feeds that users and corporations can expect when we have this so-called converged network.
Guest: I would like to focus that answer on sort of the wireless face today. I'll take to North American footprint because that's the area I have the largest experience with. We're really saying multiple carriers today begin to provide networks that bi-directionally that peak rates giving burst rates that are better than T1 services. Now at an end user level on average you're not going to get a full T1 experience but a significant fraction of the T1 experience is being laid down, is currently available and in most cases can be hired by multiple venders or multiple carriers around North America. That's a quantum leap factor 5 to 10 from where it has been roughly two years ago.
==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====
