Telstra offers wholesale customers dedicated fibre wavelengths

Stuart Corner
Monday, 21 November 2011 13:50

Business IT - Networking

Telstra has launched a service for wholesale customers that gives them dedicated access to a wavelength across Telstra's optical fibre backhaul network. It is said to be ideal for ISPs needing to get traffic from their own points of presence to NBN Co's points of interconnect.

Telstra uses dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) throughout its to carry multiple separate data streams on a fibre with each carried by an optical signal of a discrete wavelength. However, Telstra said this was the first time it had offered dedicated wavelengths to its wholesale customers.

Services will be available at 1, 2.5 and 10Gbps from approximately 600 exchanges in metropolitan areas. These services will initially support 1Gbps ethernet, 2.5Gbps SDH and 10Gbps SDH services, but other options will be introduced later, Telstra said.

According to Telstra "The new wholesale wavelength service product will suit wholesale customers seeking high bandwidth backhaul between their major PoPs and data centres, fixed backhaul between DSLAMs in major exchanges and central hub-sites, and mobile backhaul between major hub sites."

Equipment to support the new service has been supplied by Ericsson, its MHL3000 DWDM optical transmission product. Ericsson's press release quoted Telstra Wholesale group managing director, Stuart Lee, saying: "WWS effectively dedicates a specific 'wavelength' to a specific [wholesale customer] on the fibre route. While the service is managed by Telstra, traffic over the route is not switched or routed by Telstra, ensuring transparency."

According to Ericsson, the service is ideally suited to ISPs needing backhaul from the NBN points of interconnect to their own points of presence, but it adds: "Retail service providers could also use the product to provide secure high-capacity links to large organisations with high bandwidth requirements."