I understand you have a long-standing cooperation with Infinera. Can you tell us more about it?
OTEGLOBE’s co-operation with Infinera goes back to 2008 when we were building our Trans Balkan optical backbone network and we selected Infinera’s DTN optical transport as a flexible, scalable, cost effective and reliable solution.
As OTEGLOBE evolved to become the leading international telecommunications carrier in South Eastern Europe, we performed numerous network upgrades and expansions to keep up with increasing demands.
During all these years, Infinera gained our trust as they never failed to deliver in terms of excellent network performance and continuous support.
What is your experience from dealing with an international carrier like OTEGLOBE for so many years?
A key value proposition for Infinera are the strong and close working relationships we have with our customers, while providing technology leadership so that carriers like OTEGLOBE can achieve profitable growth as they deliver communications services around the world.
Last year the analyst firm, Infonetics Research, recently acquired by IHS, ranked Infinera as #1 in optical networking, based on very high ratings among customers for technology innovation, reliability and support.
This year Infonetics ranked Infinera as the fastest growing optical company in North America and EMEA combined. We see this as a strong endorsement of our customer-centric approach and technology leadership.
What triggered the recent expansion of OTEGLOBE’s backbone network between Greece and Western Europe with Infinera’s Intelligent Transport Network?
OTEGLOBE has recently signed an agreement to land the Asia-Africa-Europe-1 international submarine cable system at its landing station at Chania, Crete.
Our goal is to become the alternative hub in the Mediterranean for the continuously increasing Europe to Asia transit traffic.
To address this increasing demand, we decided to deploy Infinera's solution which enables us to enhance the scalability of our backbone with one solution that runs from the Mediterranean to the core of Europe.
How does your Intelligent Transport Network solution fit to the plans of OTEGLOBE?
Infinera’s Intelligent Transport Network delivers an ease of use solution for OTEGLOBE to manage and operate their network across borders and from remote areas in Europe to keep up with the growing demand for bandwidth. In particular Infinera is the only company today shipping 500Gb/s coherent super-channels.
A super-channel is an evolution in DWDM technology in which multiple coherent wavelengths are implemented on a single line card, and brought into service in a single operational cycle. This capability is crucial for OTEGLOBE to achieve operational scalability.
You were one of the first companies to deploy the Flexible Grid Intelligent Transport Network. Were there any challenges in being an early adopter?
First of all, Infinera never failed to deliver in terms of reliability in their technology. Moreover innovation and fast time to market is mandatory in international telecommunications, so being an early adopter gives us a significant commercial advantage.
OTEGLOBE’s continuous success is based on our ability to remain one step ahead of the competition. For example, OTEGLOBE was the first carrier in South Eastern Europe to build an advanced pan-European IP/MPLS network back in 2001.
With Infinera’s Intelligent Transport Network solution, OTEGLOBE will get the cutting edge in network scalability and flexibility, allowing us to quickly activate extra capacity to meet customer demands. That is crucial in the highly competitive telecommunications market today.
Why should telecom carriers adopt your technology?
Infinera pioneered a new approach for networks with photonic integration – providing massive WDM capacity in small power and space footprints to handle growing bandwidth needs. The Infinera Intelligent Transport Network offers extremely high strategic business value to customers like OTEGLOBE and protects their investments for the next decade.
