10 October 2002 -- France Telecom (FT), has chosen Atrica's Optical Ethernet System as the foundation for its next-generation Metro network infrastructure and has begun to deliver a new set of Ethernet-based services to its subscribers over this network.
France Telecom plans to roll-out a new class of cost-effective, high-speed business services to its customers, beginning with initial deployments in Paris, France. The new Ethernet-based services include high-speed Internet access, private line services, transparent LAN services (TLS) and DSL backhaul services.
FT has been engaged in trials of Atrica's equipment for the past year, during which a number of other potential Metro solutions were evaluated. "Our initial lab and field trials clearly demonstrated that Atrica had successfully addressed France Telecom's requirements," said Alain Roy, Project Director for Gigabit Ethernet at France Telecom.
"The Optical Ethernet System's high-capacity, scalable architecture, combined with its carrier-class features including SONET-like resiliency, guaranteed SLAs and support for TDM traffic, differentiated Atrica significantly from the other Metro equipment vendors in the market and are allowing us to offer a new generation of profitable, Ethernet-based services to our customers."
"Now, more than ever, carriers need to focus on improving profitability by offering attractive new services and reducing costs," said Vivek Ragavan, president and CEO of Atrica. "These are the primary benefits of using Atrica's Optical Ethernet System to deliver services. We are gratified that customers like France Telecom have recognized the enormous cost savings and rich, new set of services that our solution enables, and are, therefore, moving rapidly to the deployment stage."
Atrica's Optical Ethernet System combines standard 10Gigabit Ethernet with optical switching and traffic engineering and management capabilities to give carriers up to ten times better price/performance as compared to other Metro networking solutions including SONET and next-generation SONET.
Comprising the A-2100 Optical Ethernet Edge Switch, the A-8000 Series Optical Ethernet Core Switches and Atrica's Service Platform for Ethernet Networks (ASPEN), Atrica's Optical Ethernet System delivers the key carrier-class capabilities necessary to enable deployment of Ethernet in the Metro including sub-50 millisecond resiliency, guaranteed SLAs, TDM support and comprehensive service management.