TULSA, Okla., June 8 -- For the third time in a row Williams Communications has received a SUPERQuest Award for the best designed core network. The award, presented at this week's SUPERCOMM trade show, was in recognition of Williams' outstanding implementation of optical mesh architecture aimed at enhancing business for the customer. According to SUPERCOMM judges, the award was for Williams' continued focus on providing an economical traffic-engineering scheme with high-quality service capabilities. According to the company its advantage lies in the optical core switch, which enables the company to simplify its network physical architecture into three layers: a service layer, an optical switching layer and a physical dense wave division multiplexing layer. By deploying CIENA's intelligent optical switch, Williams becomes the first network to use optical-layer signaling and routing protocols. This technology enables Williams to provide rapid service delivery and end-to-end capacity management and traffic engineering, said Andy Wright, chief technologist of optical networking for Williams.