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Sycamore rises on Bell deal

Sycamore Networks (Nasdaq: SCMR) rose 13 percent Thursday after it announced BellSouth Corp. (NYSE: BLS) will use its intelligent optical switches and transport platforms to for its "Florida Multimedia Internet eXchange" network in South Florida.

Shares in Sycamore were up 7.25 to 79.94. The stock has slipped recently despite having reported strong earnings.

In August, BellSouth announced its plans to bring the high-speed Internet exchange to south Florida, which is becoming a major Internet hub, connecting routes in the U.S. with Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Western Europe. The FloridaMIX will provide a flexible optical foundation for a next generation Internet infrastructure that will support the rapid growth in data traffic and new applications such as voice and video, the companies said.

Financial details of the contract were not released.

BellSouth plans to deploy Sycamore's SN 16000 intelligent optical switches and SN 8000 intelligent optical transport platform to build an infrastructure that can route and re-route data traffic quickly in response to customer demand.

Participants in the FloridaMIX to date include FPL Fibernet; Intermedia; NETRAIL; Qwest (NYSE: Q); International Wire Communications (IWC); Diveo; and UUNET, a WorldCom company. Other ISPs are expected to join in the coming weeks.