PETAH TIKVA, Israel, Jan. 18 -- Juniper Networks Inc. and the Optical Networks division of ECI Telecom Ltd. have jointly installed and tested China's first optical Internet Protocol network. The joint venture involved the use of Juniper's Internet backbone routers and ECI Telecom's flexible dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems for Guangdong PTA, one of the country's leading operators. This network build-out will help accelerate Internet growth in the Guangdong Province, which is investing more than $400 million in Internet networking during the next five years, said Juniper Networks.
The network, which includes LumiNet Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers, began carrying commercial traffic earlier this year in Guangdong, one of China's most prosperous provinces with 75 million inhabitants. The network includes Juniper Networks' routers connected by gigabit Ethernet.
ECI Telecom has been deploying SDH and optical solutions for backbone and metropolitan networks throughout China for over a decade, said Eran Dariel, ECI Telecom's vice president and general manager for optical networks. Providing China's first IP-Over-Optical Ring using Juniper Networks routers, presents us with an excellent opportunity to further deploy our IP-Over-Optics solution, since Guangdong PTA has plans to increase the network to cover the entire province.''New Focus Completes Acquisition of JCA TechnologySAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 18 -- New Focus Inc., a supplier of fiber optic products for optical networks, has completed its acquisition of JCA Technology Inc. The merger is structured as a tax-free exchange for JCA's shareholders and a purchase transaction for accounting purposes. JCA Technology will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of New Focus.
The management teams at New Focus and JCA are pleased that we have completed the merger of our two companies, said Ken Westrick, president and CEO of New Focus. We remain very excited about the potential synergies in the combination of New Focus and JCA from both a financial performance and a technology development perspective. This transaction provides New Focus with a product family of high-speed clock amplifiers and broadband data driver amplifiers that is experiencing strong growth and solid gross margins. 360networks Expands into Munich, Berlin and ZurichVANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada, Jan. 18 -- 360networks, a provider of broadband network services, announced that it has acquired dark fiber on metropolitan networks in Munich, Berlin and Zurich. The company purchased the dark fiber from Carrier1 International S.A., a European provider of end-to-end Internet, voice, bandwidth, data center and access solutions to large users of communications services.
These metropolitan networks provide us with a deeper reach into three important business centers and offer our customers in these areas enhanced access to our global network, said Ashwin Chitamun, 360networks' vice-president of its European operations. The networks are complementary to our long-haul routes in Germany and Switzerland, and represent an important advancement for our European network.
The network in Munich covers 20 km and is scheduled for completion by mid-2001. The 75-km Berlin network and the 25-km Zurich network will be completed by the end of the year. Certain segments of all three metropolitan networks, however, will be activated at earlier dates.