Broadband networker Lucent Technologies said it has been awarded a contract to supply optical networking systems to Korea Telecom, South Korea’s largest communication service provider, for the construction of its new high-speed backbone network.
This is Korea Telecom’s largest nationwide optical networking project to date and has a potential value of up to $40 million over the next three years, officials said.
Lucent’s dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical networking system will link South Korea’s five largest cities: Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Daejeon and Gwangju . The new network will enable Korea Telecom to offer its business and residential customers sophisticated telecommunications services, including high-speed data networking.
The commercial service is scheduled to start this December, Lucent said.
Terms of the contract call for Lucent to initially deliver 35 WaveStar OLS 400G systems, each with a capacity of 400 gigabits per second (Gb/s). That is the equivalent of transmitting the data contained on 75 CD-ROMs each second. The OLS 400G system can be upgraded to a 1.6 terabit system, which can transmit 1.6 terabits of information per second without disrupting existing service.
Korea Telecom is the largest service provider in South Korea. It runs the largest and most sophisticated communications network in South Korea for local, long-distance, and international call and data service. Since the 1980s, Lucent has provided switching, optical, data and broadband access systems to Korea Telecom.