Technical Insight
Nortel demonstrates first metro application with tunable laser (Fiber News)
Nortel Networks demonstrated the first metro DWDM system to include a tunable laser at the Supercomm exhibition in Atlanta, GA. A joint demonstration was held with Bandwidth9, a tunable laser manufacturer based in Fremont, CA. Nortel employed Bandwidth9 s 2.5 Gbit/s tunable laser in its OPTera Metro 5200 system, and tuning was achieved remotely using a PC. "Tunable systems will be an essential requirement for future metro networks," commented Brian McFadden, president of Nortel s Metro Optical Group. "Using tunable lasers in the OPTera Metro product portfolio will help to increase profitability by reducing inventory costs and enabling the delivery of optical services such as bandwidth provisioning, bandwidth-on-demand and also packet switching." McFadden added that Nortel s system was also applicable to next-generation 10, 40 and 80 Gbit/s long-haul systems.