Bell Labs, NTT Photonics Collaborate

Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs research organization and NTT Photonics Laboratories announced they are collaborating on "investigations in optical packet switching technology," including transport multiprotocol label switching (T-MPLS), the initial version of MPLS transporters. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Alcatel-Lucent said in a statement, "The continuing demand for innovations in packet transport networks are driven by several factors, including: the emergence of very-high-bandwidth subscribers, notably with FTTx deployments on a large scale; new reduced power consumption and footprint specifications; and low-latency applications such as storage area network or grid computing."