Verizon to Light it Up

The Defense Information Systems Agency awarded a $2.5 billion contract to Verizon Business Network Services on Monday to provide communications services for military and other federal agencies in the Pacific region.

I asked Marlin Forbes, regional vice president for Verizon's Federal Defense and International Services division, what kind of high-speed circuits his company will supply the Defense Department users with under the contract, called the Defense Information Systems Network transmission services-Pacific II contract. Forbes answered, "We're going to supply the customers with light." That's over fiber-optic circuits, with something called lambda networking.

He said that, of course, I understood what that meant from my high school physics class. Since I never took physics, Forbes pressed on and said that Verizon will not supply circuits, but rather wavelengths on fiber-optic undersea cables, which will speed data along from one side of the Pacific to the other at data rates measured in gigabits per second -- from 2.5G to 10G.

Forbes also suggested I could look up lambda as it pertains to networking. I did and found this neat paper, which explains that lambda networking is the use of multiple optical wavelengths to provide independent communications channels along a strand of fiber optic cable. Maybe now I can pass a high school physics.

Verizon holds the current Pacific contract, which had a ceiling value of $4 billion, when awarded in 1999, which makes it $1.5 billion more than the new contract. Forbes said the lower price for the new contract reflects a larger number of undersea cables in the Pacific today than in 1999, including the $500 million Trans-Pacific Express cable Verizon helped finance and build.

Forbes said the Pacific network, which also will serve the Mideast, would use satellites to handle 15 percent to 20 percent of its traffic.