Carriers Confirm: OIF World Interoperability Demo a Success; UNI 1.0 and E-NNI Interoperability Network Brings Carriers and Vendors Together.

FREMONT, Calif. -- Some of the world's largest telecommunications carriers today declared the Optical Internetworking Forum's (OIF) World Interoperability Demonstration a complete success and of vital importance to the industry and the development of intelligent optical networks. AT&T, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI R&D Laboratories, NTT Laboratories, Telecom Italia and Verizon participated in the industry's first interoperability demonstration along with 15 equipment vendors; ADVA Optical Networking, Alcatel, Avici Systems, CIENA Corporation, Cisco Systems, Fujitsu, Lucent Technologies, Mahi Networks, Marconi, NEC, Nortel Networks, Siemens AG, Sycamore Networks, Tellabs and Turin Networks. Conducted at seven global carrier lab locations, and publicly demonstrated at SUPERCOMM 2004 in Chicago, the event marks the industry's first joint carrier, multi-vendor intelligent optical network interoperability demonstration.

"AT&T is pleased with the results of the OIF demonstration," said Mark Budniewski, product marketing manager for business networking services at AT&T. "We have seen significant progress with interworking capabilities in intelligent optical networking and are looking forward to delivering the capabilities needed to support real-time adaptive optical services in the near future."

Jing Ruiquan, technologies manager of China Telecom Beijing Research Institute said, "It was very important and beneficial to us to participate in the OIF's global demonstration and was a great opportunity to work closely with equipment suppliers."

Hans-Martin Foisel of Deutsche Telekom said, "As a participant in the OIF World Interoperability Demonstration, we have not only fulfilled a goal of dealing with multiple areas of interworking and made the event a success, but we have also gained experience and knowledge which will result in a major gain for the OIF community and the ongoing work of the OIF."

Dr. Masatoshi Suzuki, executive director of KDDI R&D Laboratories, Inc. said, "The OIF event was an excellent opportunity for us to work with our peers, including vendors, in a non-competitive environment to work towards the common goal of implementing and providing flexible and reliable optical networks based on control plane technologies such as OIF UNI/NNI."

Satoru Okamoto, senior research engineer, of NTT Network Service Systems Laboratories said, "We welcomed the opportunity to participate in an event such as the OIF demonstration, which will help move the industry towards interoperable implementations and intercontinental switched optical network services."

Mr. Alfonso Mariconda, head of Wireline/Network Services/Transport Backbone at Telecom Italia, said, "Carried out by the R&D branch of Telecom Italia Lab, the OIF World Interoperability Demonstration was an excellent opportunity for our company to participate in a joint effort with other carriers and vendors and to advance the hard work of all OIF members, demonstrating the fast growth of key, innovative optical networking solutions."

Bill Uliasz, Optical Transport Network Architecture (OTNA) director, Verizon said, "Verizon is pleased to have played a role in the OIF World Interoperability Demonstration. This first ever, multi-carrier, multi-vendor, multi-continent exercise provided a critical step toward realizing interoperable optical network architecture and facilitating provisioning of end-to-end dynamic bandwidth services."

"This unique industry event, bringing together seven carriers and 15 vendors, has received an overwhelming response from the industry," said Joe Berthold of CIENA Corp., president of the OIF. "The success of the public demonstration at SUPERCOMM and the Carrier intra lab local testing reinforces the OIF's ongoing effort to build bridges between the world's optical networking leaders."

OIF's World Interoperability Demonstration

Last month, the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) sponsored the industry's first international joint-carrier, multi-vendor optical networking interoperability demonstration. The event, conducted simultaneously in China, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States highlighted network interoperable solutions among the participating vendors employing OIF implementation agreements in a multi-carrier environment. The participating supplier and carrier companies conducted interoperability testing of Ethernet over SONET/SDH services and dynamic optical networking services. Based on ITU-T standards for Ethernet service adaptation, the Ethernet over SONET/SDH services testing included the Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), Virtual Concatenation (VCAT), and the Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS). The dynamic optical networking interoperability testing was based on OIF implementation agreements for UNI 1.0 release 2 and E-NNI, and included testing of both the control and data plane. These implementation agreements are based on ITU-T's requirements for automatically switched optical networks (ASON). An overview of the event was on display June 22-24 at SUPERCOMM 2004 in Chicago. Additional information can be found at http://www.oiforum.com.

About the OIF

Launched in April of 1998, the OIF is a non-profit organization with 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.