Alaska Communications Systems (ACS) has picked Nortel to provide a 40G optical network for the terrestrial portion of an undersea fiber-optic cable from Alaska to Oregon.

The new network will position ACS to deliver end-to-end communications offerings for enterprise and mass-market customers who require high-performance connectivity between Alaska and the lower 48 states.

"At ACS, we are focused on serving the fast-growing wireline/wireless data and enterprise markets and see significant annual bandwidth growth rates,” said Anand Vadapalli, ACS’ senior vice president for network and IT. “Nortel's 40G solution, which allows us to quadruple our unit capacity while making no compromises on network performance, will be key to helping us grow our business. With Nortel, we are furthering our commitment to provide reliable and high-bandwidth enterprise services, consistent with our plans to have the Alaska-Oregon network up and running by the end of 2008 and available for commercial service very early in 2009."

The ACS optical network platform includes the Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 convergence system and the Common Photonic Layer (CPL) line system.

Nortel also announced that Bell Canada has deployed of Nortel's 40G Optical platform in its backbone network.

Nortel said its 40G Adaptive Optical Engine enables four times the current network bandwidth within Bell's Montreal-New York, Toronto-Chicago and Toronto-Montreal traffic corridors. This investment gives Bell more bandwidth in its backbone network, ensuring support for more customers and higher access speeds down the road.

"With Nortel's 40G solution as part of our network backbone, we continue to expand the leading-edge technology that allows us to deliver a robust Internet experience to Canadian consumers and businesses," said Kevin Crull, president of Bell Residential Services.

Nortel's solution will enable 40G transmission to co-exist within Bell's current 10G network, allowing fiber-optic cables to carry vast amounts of information across the network.

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