The company – formerly Telia Carrier – says it has used the equipment on a route between Hamburg and Copenhagen to demonstrate the seamless integration of routed optical networking with DWDM transponders carrying wavelength services.
Dariusz Solowiej (pictured), VP of network technology and customer operations at Arelion, said: “Multi-layer architecture has always been challenging to scale and operate due to decades of accumulated complexity.”
He said: “With this latest trial, Arelion demonstrated the possibility to simplify conversion and interoperability, bringing us closer to routed optical networking that evolves cost structures, scalability and efficiency.”
At this week’s Capacity Europe conference, Arelion CEO Staffan Göjeryd told Capacity that the company is planning to upgrade its “entire IP domain” and its optical equipment to increase speeds. This follows the acquisition of the unit from Telia Company by Swedish pension funds.
The company is moving to “off-the-shelf silicon”, said Göjeryd, a move that “untangles us from the proprietary environment”. This means Arelion can mix suppliers on a single network – something it has done this week with the Hamburg-Copenhagen trial, conducted on a live route.
Solowiej said: “400G coherent pluggables will help our customers secure high-performance connectivity at the lowest cost and help us grow our networks in scale as we continue to connect the world.”
In the trial, Acacia’s pluggable coherent optical modules were plugged into Cisco routers, “enabling Arelion’s further adoption of the simpler and more scalable architecture of routed optical networking, combining innovations in silicon, optics and routing systems”, said Arelion this week.
“This architecture simplifies the network layer stack, and meet the increasing bandwidth demands of Arelion’s customers while greatly reducing capital and operational expenditures.”
Arelion said it will continue its organic expansion, providing its service provider and enterprise customers with the opportunity to improved customer experience, efficient connectivity investment and better pricing.
Göjeryd told Capacity that Arelion is building new routes in the US, including Ashburn to Dallas, and El Paso to San Diego to Los Angeles.
But it is “also looking at the Mexican market”, said Göjeryd. “It’s a local market, not just into and out of the US, a local ecosystem.” Arelion will be working with local players, he said.
