AT&T Introduces Next-Generation SONET Portfolio Enhancements to Business Customers

AT&T Inc. yesterday announced two enhancements to the Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) service portfolio, which will allow both wholesale and retail business customers to better converge voice, data and video capabilities over Internet Protocol (IP)-enabled networks.

The two features — Virtual Concatenation (VCAT) service and Arc Sub-ring service — provide more efficient and flexible use of bandwidth so that businesses can quickly add, increase, mix and manage traffic flows across networks without being forced to add equipment or rearrange their existing services. AT&T is one of the first to announce a wide deployment of VCAT technology to support Ethernet services across metropolitan areas.

This is a significant benefit to financial institutions, government agencies or health care providers, which are dealing in real time with massive amounts of data and traffic across multiple locations. It is especially helpful for wireless operators and other wholesale customers that manage multiple SONET rings in a metro area and want to combine traffic with different speeds over a single link to achieve more efficient use of their existing fiber routes.

The features will be offered in the 13 states in which facilities are available: California, Nevada, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Connecticut.

VCAT lets users bond Ethernet paths across a dedicated SONET ring without additional equipment. The VCAT features streamline the process for aggregating voice, video and IP traffic from multiple rings and allow SONET customers to quickly allocate bandwidth when it is needed for services such as business continuity and disaster recovery. The Arc Sub-ring feature helps SONET ring customers add new locations through a single connection without affecting the main ring or reconfiguring services such as Ethernet.

"As a leading provider of optical solutions, AT&T is focused on enhancing our SONET and Ethernet services to help our customers meet their evolving bandwidth needs," said Sanford Brown, vice president, Connectivity and Metro Network Solutions. "Being among the first to deploy VCAT technology across a metro area is one more example of how AT&T continues to provide best-in-class services across our portfolio to meet customers' bandwidth requirements."

In addition to VCAT and Arc Sub-rings, AT&T is introducing these features in its optical product suite:

• AT&T now supports the ability to "oversubscribe" virtual packet rings with AT&T SMARTRing® services. Oversubscription allows customers to shift unused bandwidth within a SONET ring to handle bursts of traffic. This allows for more flexible bandwidth management across Ethernet circuits on AT&T's SMARTRing backbone.
• Unprotected Channel Transport is now available for new Dedicated SONET Ring Service customers. It will allow customers the option to give lower-priority traffic an unprotected channel so that the protection channel may be used to route other traffic.

AT&T offers a complete suite of optical solutions for both wholesale and enterprise customers. More information on AT&T optical solutions can be found at www.business.att.com/access_and_local.