but no one seems to know exactly what it is. Some call it next-generation SONET; others call it the Multiservice Provisioning Platform (MSPP). And since neither term has been clearly defined, vendors are making up their own definitions and then claiming to be market leaders."17 MSPPs combine transport, switching, and routing platforms into an inte- grated system with which service providers can offer bundled services' flex- ibly and ostensibly at a lower cost. By incorporating many service interfaces in one device, MSPPs may eliminate the need for extra devices to deliver intelligent optical services. Proponents also claim that MSPPs improve SONET's efficiency in transporting multiservice traffic. Next-generation SONET platforms, however, do much the same thing. MSPPs grew out of the next-generation SONET market. The MSPP category is really an umbrella category that includes next-generation SONET, and the lines are blurry between the two. Original next-generation SONET boxes were sin- gle-platform SONET ADMs, perhaps with an integrated crossconnect capa- bility and Ethernet capabilities made possible through a service interface. Then MSPP startups started emerging and taking this model and adding other functions into it, such as Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing. Observers state that a device has to meet some criteria before qualifying as an MSPP. An MSPP device has to have a separate circuit for each service and a switching fabric for each type of traffic. A next-generation SONET device operates strictly at Layer 1: ADM, optical crossconnects, and a DWDM backend. MSPPs include switching and perhaps routing functions. Some vendors, such as Astral Point, take the position that MSPP and next-generation SONET are two different categories. According to this ven- dor, MSPP is a shopping mall of services that can be used to access the car- rier network; next-generation SONET only encompasses commonly occurring transport elements. Nortel also views next-generation SONET and MSPP as separate and distinct markets, and