Spanning across 1,105km of fibre between LA and San Jose, California in the US, Infinera said the trial was made possible through the implementation of its DTN-X platform, which has already proved to increase capacity on previous trials. It said it also deployed photonic integrated circuits (PICs) which operate in the core of the network. The trial was completed in the field of super-channels technology – a large unit of optical capacity created by combining multiple optical carriers into a single managed entity.
The company estimated demand for bandwidth is increasing by 50% year on year.
European carrier TeliaSonera, with 164 million subscribers across the world, has been looking to expand its presence across North America, driven by demand for a global network from their customer that addresses IP, Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM), voice and specialist mobile services. “Our vision is to offer customers leading-edge services that efficiently scale their business,” said Erik Hallberg, president at TeliaSonera International Carrier. “As 10Gbps services proliferate and 100Gbps router ports emerge, we are trialling advanced solutions that’s scale optical networks beyond 100Gbps.”
Infinera has been developing super-channel technology based on 500Gbps speeds, a technology on the network that it believes scales the demand for capacity on optical networks without the need to scale operational cost and complexity.
Geoff Bennett, director of solutions and technology at Infinera believes certain operators and service providers may have missed the opportunity to deploy super-channel technology sooner, if they have already began their procurement cycle for new technology.
“Service providers do not just go out and buy things like we would go out and buy a new phone or a new television. They have very long-term procurement cycles, typically four-five years,” he said. “It would therefore depend on what stage an individual service provider is in during their procurement process. If they started a procurement process this year, before super-channel technology was available, it might be a while before they get round to deploying it.”
