Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) today announced the introduction of two new IP routers that will expand the market of the Paris-based company’s service router portfolio.

 

Company officials said the routers are designed to give service providers a so-called “economically viable” alternative for offering smaller communities the same advanced mobile, residential and business services currently delivered in larger metropolitan areas.

 

Alcatel-Lucent is extending its 7750 service router family with the introduction of two new routers, the 7750 SR-c12 and 7750 SR-c4, which company officials said will extend the benefits of service routing further out into the network and also help “mission-critical” verticals such as utilities, transportation, healthcare, public safety and financial institutions to transform their networks to all-IP solution scaled to their needs.

 

With these additions, Alcatel-Lucent is effectively extending a “proven, feature-rich” platform to address new market opportunities where they need the capacity and capability, but at more cost-effective price points, company officials said.

 

“The elegant integration with the existing portfolio – especially with a single operating system from end-to-end – makes it attractive to operators who are looking to deliver full-featured, high performance services from their smaller or more remote points of presence in order to drive new revenues. This is the next logical evolution of the portfolio, and these platforms are powerful additions to the 7750 SR family,” said Glen Hunt, principal analyst of carrier infrastructure of IT research firm Current Analysis (News - Alert), in a statement.

 

Both products are fully-featured multiservice routers offering the same suite of applications for which the service router is known, but in a smaller form-factor, company officials said. The products are scaled to meet the requirements of smaller “points of presence” in large service provider networks, and to address IP/MPLS network requirements for smaller-scale service providers and mission critical verticals.

 

“Alcatel-Lucent continues to build out and strengthen its IP portfolio with innovations such as the recently introduced 100GE interface, targeted at massive bandwidth requirements, and now with our new high performance platforms dimensioned for smaller points of presence,” said Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s IP activities. “Not only do the new service routers deliver outstanding flexibility in their ability to deliver a full range of Ethernet port speeds from 10Mb/s to 10Gb/s, but they’re also well suited to programs designed to extend broadband connectivity, which is a driver for economic development in all regions.”

 

Over 280 service providers in more than 100 countries around the world have selected the Alcatel-Lucent IP/MPLS portfolio as key elements of their IP transformation. According to Ovum (News - Alert), Alcatel-Lucent holds the No. 2 position in the IP/MPLS Edge market segment.

 

Earlier this week, Alcatel-Lucent announced that an advanced communications-based train control, or “CBTC,” system has been operating successfully for the Beijing metro line 4, providing passengers with a “faster, safer and more convenient” traveling experience.