Sprint Nextel considers pseudowire rollout

According to a report in Light Reading, Sprint Nextel is considering a major rollout of pseudowires for its wireless network and has issued an RFP for the technology. Pseudowires enable carriers to carve up their bandwidth into packetized virtual channels, which helps to reduce the need for T1 backhaul lines from cell sites to the network backbone. Such a deployment would save the carrier a good amount of money and make for an easier transition to Ethernet and IP. To date, only a few pockets of the U.S. use pseudowires and several carriers overseas have also deployed them, but a major deployment like this from Sprint would go a long way toward validating the technology.

For more on Sprint Nextel's possible pseudowire plans:
- see this article from Light Reading