Northern Telecom Ltd, Ottawa, Canada yesterday announced the final leg of its staggered DPN-100 launch to Canada and the US where products will be available from July. The nine-strong family of X25 packet switches was first exhibited in its entirety at the Hannover Fair, Germany in March, although European customers have had piecemeal access to different switches since last September. DPN-100 was originally the name of Northern Telecom’s biggest private switch – 30,000 user access lines launched last September, but now refers to a packet switching product line which embraces the lower end smaller business users as well. Graham Strange, division general manager for DPN-100 said that Northern Telecom is moving into the low end of the packet data communications market for the first time. The top end switch DPN-100/500, addresses the 30,000 access mark, with the DPN-100/5 offering a minimal eight access lines at the bottom end. A Eurodata study has forecast that packet switching will be one of the fastest growing services between 1985 and 1995. The Swedish PTT, Televerket, is expanding its Datex packet switching service on the back of this trend and will implement the Northern Telecom range to supplement its existing Tymnet equipment.
