Ciena makes Cable&Wireless 100G ready in Asia

The 6500 Packet-Optical Platform caters for 100G with Ciena’s WaveLogic Coherent Optical Processors, which allows 100G communications on existing fiber-optic cables.

According to Ciena VP of sales for Northern and Eastern Europe Peter Newcombe, the mesh architecture will also promote resiliency and service flexibility across the network, and help Cable&Wireless prepare for future capacity demand in the region.

“This is one of the best ways to move traffic around over long distances, and in this case, in the metropolitan area,” Newcombe said.

He said Ciena has been working on a number of projects with companies upgrading networks to 100G, mostly by telecommunications and service providers wanting a more stable and robust system.

“We are now well into volume with our rollout of 100G systems, and a fair amount of that is traffic from Asia coming into Europe, either terrestrial or submarine networks,” Newcombe said.

As part of the project, Ciena will work with Cable and Wireless to establish services, based on Ciena’s 4200 Advanced Services Platform, for the upgrade.

Cable&Wireless Worldwide director for network planning and implementation Gavin Tait said the company has experienced “explosive demand” for bandwidth in Hong Kong and Singapore, and that high-capacity services are required if it wants to remain in competition in the Asian markets.

Cable&Wireless has one of the largest fibre networks in the UK dedicated to business use. It spans 425,000km.

It is also part of the consortium laying the West Africa Cable System, which will connect Namibia and other parts of West Africa.

June 6, 2012

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