LOWELL, Mass., Oct. 8 -- Mintera Corp., a New England startup that wants to enable the migration to 40-Gb optical transport in metro-core, regional, long haul and ultralong haul optical networks, announced its first product line, the MI 40000, this week in Japan at a private conference and trade show hosted by Net One Systems. Menachem Abraham, Mintera’s chairman and CEO, said, "Extending the useful life of existing networks by two to three years and preparing for the deployment of next-generation networks in the second half of this decade implies that during 2004 and 2005, carriers will be pursuing 40-Gb trials and research and development work. Early adopters will deploy 40-Gb networks in this period, often as an overlay to existing infrastructure." Widespread deployment of broadband in the last mile, along with emerging enterprise applications such as remote disaster recovery data centers, storage networking over optical, grid computing and advanced scientific research and government applications, will generate massive traffic increases over backbone networks in the coming years, he said. "Core WAN routers, Ethernet switch routers, optical cross-connects and optical transport equipment will need to support data rates higher than 10 Gb," Abraham said in a Mintera statement. "Already today, market leaders in core routing are field-testing 40-Gb interfaces on their high-end products, and government and research networks running at 40 Gb/s are being planned for 2004 deployment." Mintera said it has already booked orders for its products and services, which it will exhibit at 2003 Next Generation Networks conference, to be held Nov. 4-5 at the Marriott Copley Place in Boston. For more information, visit: www.mintera.com