ATLANTA, GA, June 23 -- Four major telecommunications companies -- BellSouth, British Telecommunications (BT), France Telecom (FT) and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) -- have developed a common technical specification that should hasten bringing optical networking directly to businesses and homes.BellSouth, BT, FT, and NTT have been participating in the Full Service Access Network (FSAN) initiative. FSAN is a group of 20 international network operators cooperating in the development of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) passive optical networks (PON). FSAN members include Bell Canada, BellSouth, BT, Chunghwa, Deutsche Telecom, Dutch PTT, France Telecom, GTE, Korea Telecom, NTT, SBC, Swisscom, Telefonica, Telstra and Telecom Italia. FSAN has contributed documentation to various standardization bodies; in particular, the FSAN ATM PON specification has been adopted as ITU-T Recommendation G.983. BellSouth, BT, FT and NTT all are actively planning ATM PON deployments to business and residential customers.