Lucent's Stinger for high-speed telecom

Telecommunications equipment group Lucent has introduced a new product, the Stinger, for high-speed, high-volume data and voice communications. This will speed up communications over the traditional telephone lines and will allow Internet service providers and phone companies to offer high-speed data, video and voice transmission. The advantage of this service is that it can be used without compromising on the quality of voice transmission, normally associated with such transmission over normal lines.

This product uses the normal telephone lines and sends the information at about 30 times the speed of normal transmission. The Stinger can also split the line and carry up to 16 different lines using one connection. The Stinger technology assigns a higher priority to voice ‘packets’ during transmission so that there is no dropout, disruption or lag in voice transmission.

Lucent acquired this technology from Ascend Communications when it acquired that company in June 1999 for $24 billion.

Another networking and communications product giant Cisco offers similar services, but only for data. Lucent has indicated that Alcatel, the French telecom equipment company, is also entering the field.