n Understanding One’s Requirement: Service providers planning to deploy transmission equipment for their network should first evaluate their network. First, they should decide whether they plan to do the deployment on their own or they plan to take the help of equipment manufacturers. Second, they should be clear what to deploy and not as vague requirement can lead to additional costs, thereby increasing the capital expenditure. Third, the operator should interact with the vendors to know how are they going to fulfill the company’s requirement (technical as well as operational).

n Flexible Design: The network should help in providing connection through multiple rings so that if one ring goes down it does not affect the network and the traffic can be routed to other rings. The flexibility should be in terms of cross connection, availability of types of interfaces/services, and support technology and application evolution. Vendors should provide powerful cross connection capabilities. In terms of interfaces, the equipment should provide prevailing TDM capabilities—E1, DS3, STM-1, STM-4, and STM-16; emerging technologies—ESCON and FICON; and IP technologies—ATM, IP, Ethernet, and gigabit Ethernet. All these features will vary depending on metro, regional, or backbone infrastructure.

n Network Management: The service provider should see whether the network management supports multiple vendor interconnects or not and ensures reliable and consistent service. It seems ITU is developing a network management system that can manage equipment of any vendor in a given network. This platform requires two key interface such as CORBA and Q3. These platforms are evolving. If one can guarantee these platforms then it is future proof for a multivendor scenario.

n Scalability and Upgradability: Generally, all vendors in the transmission space provide scalability and upgradability but one has to look at what prices and compare them. Also, one should be aware about the upgradability of the equipment and whether high-end equipment supports all the features provided by its earlier counterpart. One should also be able to expand the network without making the existing equipment redundant.

n Protection Features: The vendor should provide both equipment and network protection. The vendors should specify if the network is cut how to make the make hardware operational. The service provider should check whether protection mechanisms are built in the product or not. If not, the carrier should consider additional investment that will be required for this facility.

n Financial Backing: In the last two to three years lot of companies have mushroomed in the transmission equipment segment. But with things slowing down lot of companies are hardly making any significant investment in R&D. Before buying any product, carriers should look into the R&D investment of the company and its future commitment. One should also look at future roadmap of the company before opting for any product.