INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: Alcatel Government Solutions
Vice President
Business Development and Marketing
Alcatel Government Solutions
Currently leading business development and marketing for Alcatel’s government subsidiary, Ed Bursk is a contributing member of AFCEA, IAC, NDIA, NCOIC and the IPv6 Forum, a featured speaker at industry and government events, and a published author, specializing in the application of advanced technologies for government missions.
Q: Can you tell us about your company and what it has to offer to government and military customers?
A: Alcatel Government Solutions is an applied technology company that is focused on providing the broadest array of networking and communications solutions to the U.S. government.
If I had only one word use to describe Alcatel’s solutions, it would be “reliability.” We offer high-reliability solutions that come from our strong background in the telecommunications and carrier market, where we have some customers reporting beyond “five nines” of reliability. We’ve purposely carried that through into our IP and enterprise products. It’s one of our distinguishing characteristics.
Q: Please tell our readers more about your solutions.
A: For clarity, we offer several categories of solutions: optical infrastructure for national, regional and base infrastructure; wireless and microwave infrastructure for network expansion, continuity of operations and emergency communications; enterprise networks for bases and buildings, both wired and wireless; and many specialized and innovative capabilities.
Q: What are some of your company’s other innovations?
A: Our commitment to R&D is driving our leadership in WiMax, which eclipses WiFi in speed, range and also bringing true mobility capabilities—perfect for tactical distribution of information, as well as base or regional coverage strategically. We also are innovators in IP video, where we’re able to network millions of video streams up to HDTV quality, which makes it an ideal platform for net-centric and homeland security applications. We offer DVB-RCS2 VSAT solutions, the new standard being mandated by DoD and DISA, which provide multi-megabit two-way satellite networking.
It’s also worth noting, for those of your readers affected by the current mandatory 2 GHz relocation for government microwave networks, that we offer the only “rapid relocation” program within the 2 GHz frequency band.
Q: Where are your solutions deployed today?
A: We have excellent deployment of our LAN switching in the Navy surface fleet and more. Our optical networking solutions are deployed by the Army both CONUS and OCONUS. Our microwave networks are deployed across CONUS and in many other countries, including multiple networks for our military in Southwest Asia. Our Voiceover- IP systems are well deployed by the U.S. government, and with worldwide experience we’re able to do a tremendous job for them.
Q: What separates your company from others in your field?
A: Over the past five years, we’ve invested billions of dollars a year into R&D, including about $2.5 billion last year, which has resulted in world-leading product developments, including in IPv6, WiMax, VoIP, optical and microwave. These products are leaders in features, price/performance and scalability, and they maintain our reputation for reliability—for products that can “take a whacking and keep on tracking.”
We’ve seen our gear go through some environmental and weather extremes, for example with last year’s Gulf storms, surviving Category 5 winds. We have done work in Southwest Asia that has been very reliable for the U.S. government. Our broad portfolio of products literally works for the government on land, at sea and under sea, and in space.
Q: What areas are you working on for meeting the future needs of the government and military?
A: Some of the things that we have done that are quite exciting for the military are in the WiMax arena. We’re members of the WiMax Forum. We’re supporting efforts to demonstrate forward deployment and multi-application capabilities. It’s quite exciting to see a fast-setup, high-bandwidth satellite downlink with local distribution over WiMax at a far higher speed than available elsewhere, and more reliable, while also being able, for example, to serve users moving around in vehicles. The products are 802.16e-compatible. We think this is a very relevant solution that would improve our troops’ capabilities now, and it would be able to be proven and deployed very quickly.
On the IP networking front, we see a lot of activity with net-centric enabling technologies coming right out of our commercially deployed IPTV solutions. While that might sound funny, it’s actually based on technology we’re deploying with AT&T to millions of homes in the United States, where we provide multiple video streams up to HDTV quality, plus Internet and Voice over IP. What that means is that we have technology today that can scale into the millions of simultaneous IP streams, which is excellent for both net-centric and homeland security applications, for example SBInet, and other applications, such as distribution of real-time UAV video and data, plus AVTC, with mission critical video, voice and data.
♦
