Ciena, Telstra and Ericsson have collaborated to achieve speeds over 61.5GHz spectrum on Telstra’s transmission network in Melbourne. The companies say that this demonstrates the highest spectral efficiency per fibre pair ever achieved in a live environment.
The achievement enables up to 30.4Tb/s per fibre pair – previously, the highest on record was 25.6Tb/s. This was possible, according to Ciena, thanks to the deployment of software-programmable 400Gb/s wavelengths utilising the network strategy and technology firm’s WaveLogic Ai modem technology on the 6500 packet-optical platform, in combination with its Blue Planet manage control plan and Liquid Spectrum applications.
Ericsson provided end-to-end systems integration to supply, install, and integrate the optical equipment into Telstra’s network. It managed the deployment of technology for this demonstration, together with Telstra and Ciena.
David Robertson, director of IP and Transport Engineering at Telstra, said: ‘Over the next five years we forecast traffic on our network will grow by five times. This technology will be deployed in our domestic transmission network and we will look for opportunities to use it in Telstra’s international subsea cable network, which is the largest in the Asia-Pacific region.’
Steve Alexander, Ciena’s chief technology officer added: ‘As high-bandwidth applications become further ingrained in our daily lives, the implementation of a more intelligent and adaptive network – one that lets operators eliminate complexity by combining intelligent automation, real-time performance monitoring, and the ability to continuously tune their network – is critical.’
Emilio Romeo, head of Ericsson Australia and New Zealand, stated: ‘This will give Telstra the ability to predict and address connectivity and capacity challenges as they emerge, enabling them to respond and allocate capacity across paths in real time.’
This achievement will lay the foundation for Telstra’s Networks for the Future program delivering efficiency, scalability and programmability to the network to meet future demands. The WaveLogic Ai technology has also recently been deployed to assist Unitymedia with its network upgrade in Germany (see Unitymedia adds network capacity with Ciena's Wavelogic Ai).
