Carrier Lab Testing Begins for OIF's Worldwide Interoperability Demonstration; Carriers/Suppliers Begin Intra-Lab Testing of OIF Implementation Agreements.

Business Editors

SUPERCOMM 2004

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 2004

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) announced today that carrier and supplier member companies have begun intra-lab testing for the industry's first global joint carrier, multi-vendor intelligent optical network interoperability demonstration. Unlike traditional public interoperability testing events conducted at a third party lab, this interoperability testing is being conducted simultaneously at different carrier test facilities in China, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. The World Interoperability Demonstration marks the first step toward carrier deployment of interoperable control plane technologies, and the service definitions based on them, into individual networks.

The OIF World Interoperability Demonstration is being hosted by some of the world's leading telecommunications carriers including AT&T, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI R&D Laboratories, Inc., NTT, Telecom Italia, and Verizon. Once testing is completed, intra- and inter-lab interoperability will be publicly showcased in June at SUPERCOMM 2004 in Chicago.

"The World Interoperability Demonstration illustrates the OIF's commitment to meet carriers' demands for next generation integrated IP optical solutions," said Amy Wang, Avici, co-chair of OIF's Interoperability Working Group. "Our goal is to verify interoperability of vendor implementations and introduce new methodologies in the area of multi-site, remote testing. We are very pleased and encouraged by the broad industry support from the world's leading carriers and vendors."

The World Interoperability Demonstration will help carriers explore the opportunities and challenges of internetworking across multiple carrier testing sites, laying the foundation for the development of inter-carrier interoperability agreements by the OIF. Specifically, the carrier-centric testing focuses on the operations benefits of multi-vendor solutions, new service definition (Ethernet/GFP), intra-carrier networking strategies and global networking service models. Carriers are also evaluating the operational and economic benefits of multi-vendor end-to-end network provisioning architecture for Ethernet and optical services being previewed within the World Interoperability Demonstration. This event, with a high level of carrier and vendor participation, shows that carriers are serious about bringing these technologies and services closer to deployment.

The World Interoperability Demonstration will be available for public observation during SUPERCOMM 2004 from June 22-24, in Chicago at the OIF booth #15239, Hall B2. SUPERCOMM attendees will be able to view live demonstrations of OIF's latest implementation agreements on UNI 1.0 and E-NNI as supported by carrier and supplier participants.

About the OIF

Launched in April of 1998, the OIF is a non-profit organization with more than 170+ international member companies, including many of the world's leading carriers and vendors. As the only industry group uniting representatives from data and optical networks, the OIF helps advance the standards and methods of optical networks. OIF's purpose is to accelerate the deployment of interoperable, cost-effective and robust optical internetworks and their associated technologies. Optical internetworks are data networks composed of routers and data switches interconnected by optical networking elements.

With the goal of promoting worldwide compatibility of optical internetworking products, the OIF actively supports and extends the work of national and international standards bodies. Liaisons have been established with The ATM Forum, IEEE 802.3 HSSG, IETF, ITU-T Study Group 13, ITU-T Study Group 15, MEF, NPF, T1M1, T1X1, TMF and the XFP MSA Group. More information on the OIF can be found at www.oiforum.com.