Pledging its allegiance to the North American optical space, Hitachi (News - Alert) Communication Technologies America Inc. today announced a new optical transport platform based on 100gbps architecture.

 

“This is proof Hitachi is not abandoning the North American optical market,” said Scott Wilkinson, vice president of product management and system engineering at Hitachi, adding that Global Crossing (News - Alert) is by far its largest customer for optics and uses the Hitachi WDM solution.

 

“There are people who are going to say we’re late to the market,” he added. “But it’s an evolution to our current platforms that need to be updated.”

 

That said, entering the market at this time offers Hitachi and its customers the benefits of enjoying the latest optical advances in terms of backplane capacity, density and size.

 

“We believe it is a leapfrog,” he said.

 

The new AMN6400 packet/optical transport platform can be used in metro applications for services aggregation and translation, as well as for long-haul uses. It combines the functionality of next-generation SONET, DWDM and packet-based systems, offering optical layer ROADM (News - Alert)/wavelength selective switch capabilities, hybrid packet/optical transport network switching, advanced ultra-long haul optics, and MPLS-TP.

 

The AMN6400 platform will be available for evaluation later this year. Commercial availability is slated for the second quarter of 2010.