ARTICLE   

Lucent CEO Predicts Network of Networks

Wednesday, October 21, 1998

By Kelley Damore, Computer Reseller News

What the industry and the world need is a "network of networks" to deal with the burgeoning growth of the networking and communications market, said Lucent Technologies chairman and CEO Richard McGinn.

"The Internet is enabling [communications], but customers are also demanding more and more," McGinn told attendees at the Networld+Interop show in Atlanta.

McGinn said more than 37 million people log onto the Internet daily and can access 830 million Web pages, and he expects that traffic to triple yearly.

McGinn pegged e-commerce at $25 billion currently, expecting it to hit $1 trillion by the year 2001.

"The answer is full data and public networks," McGinn said. Needed advancements will come around broadband, optical, wired LAN and wireless, as well as merged IP/ATM networks and IP/Sonet networks over time, he said.

With optical networking, "we can get 400 gigabits on a single fiber, with up to terabits by the year 2000," McGinn said. "That's 2,000 times the traffic it could handle two years ago."

That demand is forcing companies to keep their infrastructure up to snuff.

Lucent, Murray Hill, N.J., plans to spend $2 billion this year on its own network and IT costs, McGinn said.

"It took more than a century to install 700 million lines, and we'll see another 700 million in the next 15 years, as well as 700 million wireless lines," McGinn said. He also expects 1,000 more service providers to emerge by 2001.