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The telecom giant plans to spend between $8 billion and $8.5 billion to upgrade its Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) backbone.

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) looks like the motivating factor in AT&T's announcement at Globalcomm 2006 of the forthcoming upgrade to OC-768, 40Gbit per second speeds on its MPLS backbone, Washington Technology reported from the conference:

"Never before have we witnessed the level of dependence on communication that exists today," CTO John Stankey said Tuesday at the GlobalComm trade show. "We now have multiple networks delivering data and services to different endpoints....We now are on the cusp of a fundamental shift to convergence, bringing everything to a single IP network."
Global Crossing made a similar declaration, and has begun upgrading its backbone to OC-768 speeds. "We're responding to the market shift toward services that give customers an enhanced experience -- services such as video streaming, music and video downloads, IP-TV and other large applications," John Legere, Global Crossing's chief executive officer, said in a statement.

And in Japan, Yahoo! BB deployed a 40Gbit interface from Cisco's Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture.

That deployment will let Yahoo! BB, one of Japan's largest broadband services with over 5 million ADSL subscribers, deliver video on demand and other IPTV services throughout 23 districts in Japan.

Japan and many other countries run far ahead of the US in broadband penetration with their populations. Also, residents in Japan and Korea have enjoyed much faster broadband connectivity, at 100MB speeds at prices that compete with those in the US for single digit connections.

The efforts by AT&T and Global Crossing are a start toward catching up with the world, but it could be a few years before true high speed connections at competitive price points become the norm in the US.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.