Lucent Upgrades WaveStar to 320-Channel, 800-Gb/s Transmission

Lucent Technologies Inc. of Murray Hill, N.J., has announced an upgrade to its WaveStar OLS 400G dense wavelength division multiplexing system. The OLS 800G quadruples the number of available wavelengths to 320, each transmitting at 2.5 Gb/s, for a maximum capacity of 800 Gb/s. They can be combined to offer 80 channels of 10-Gb/s transmission.>

Under terms of a preferred supplier agreement, Global Crossing Ltd. of Hamilton, Bermuda, will be the first carrier to test the system, which is expected to be commercially available in the first quarter of 2001. Global Crossing plans to construct a next-generation optical network on five continents.