Telstra set to boost backbone network capacity?

Stuart Corner
Monday, 28 July 2008 05:01

Opinion and Analysis

Ericsson announced last week that it had won a contract to supply Deutsche Telekom with technology that will significantly increase the capacity of its optical fibre backbone network. This has big implications for Telstra.

Ericsson said: "[our] leading 40Gbps multihaul WDM solution, Marconi MHL 3000 has been commercially started by Deutsche Telekom AG in the German core network. This step follows in-depth testing, optimisation and systems integration. Ericsson's Marconi MHL 3000 MultiHaul WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) platform is nationwide commercially deployed with 40Gbps functionality. This is a vital step to provide necessary bandwidth in core networks to meet the growing broadband traffic demand from business and residential customers using new multimedia services."

This is hardly an illuminating statement but what it means is that, using new modulation technologies (the means by which data is encoded onto signals in an optical fibre) each 'colour' of light in the fibre can carry four times the amount of data that it presently does: 40Gbps instead of 10Gbps. This does not necessarily mean that the capacity of the entire network can be increased fourfold because there may be some difficulties in upgrading every wavelength on a fibre from 10Gbps to 40Gbps. Another vendor, Nortel, has suggested that perhaps only about 20 percent could be upgraded.

And what has this got to do with Telstra? Simple: Telstra uses the same Marconi product the MHL 30000, in its network and a year ago Ericsson boasted that it and Telstra had "successfully completed the world's first live network trial for next-generation 40Gbps optical transmission technology,"

Ericsson claimed it had demonstrated that "Telstra's existing 10Gbps (DWDM) transmission technology...can be increased to 40Gbps without major changes to the network." The trial was conducted over Telstra's existing 10Gbps 1,121 km coastal and 1,244 km inland optical fibre routes from Sydney to Melbourne. Bill Zikou, CEO, Ericsson Australia and New Zealand, said: "Ericsson's DWDM solution, Marconi MHL 3000, provides a seamless in service upgrade of capacity with minimal investment. This means that with Ericsson they would have no need to change the existing optic fibre infrastructure."

So, the order from Deutsche Telekom demonstrates that all the bugs have been ironed out of Ericsson's technology, that it has been thoroughly tested and is now ready for large scale deployment in the network of a major carrier.

This technology is very new, and in high demand. In terms of commercial deployments, Nortel seems to have a slight lead over Ericsson. Its product has been available for around three months and Ryan Perera, head of metro ethernet networks for Nortel Asia, told iTWire last month that Nortel had already signed up 14 customers and had seven trials underway in Asia with more planned.

Nortel's most recently announced commercial customer is Southern Cross Cable which iis deploying it on the terrestrial component of its network. However it has the potential to be used to increase capacity on the submarine portion also.