Carrier and supplier member companies of the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), based in Fremont, Calif., have begun intralaboratory testing for the industry's joint carrier, multivendor optical network World Interoperability Demonstration. This initial testing of the forum's implementation agreements is being conducted simultaneously in China, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US, and is a step toward carrier deployment of interoperable control plane technologies, and their service definitions, into individual networks. The demonstration, to be showcased at SUPERCOMM 2004 in Chicago, will help carriers such as AT&T, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia and Verizon investigate the resources and challenges of internetworking across multiple test sites.