Ciena announced it was selected by Southern Cross Cables, an
Australasian bandwidth wholesaler that owns and maintains a trans-Pacific
network, to expand its subsea cable network.
To meet growing demand for high-bandwidth services and applications like
video and cloud computing, which is now pushing its needs beyond 10 Gb/s
wavelengths, Southern Cross Cables will increase capacity on all of its network
segments between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, including one
that spans more than 8,000 kilometers, with Ciena‘s 40/100G coherent optical solutions.
Southern Cross Cables will also enhance its network’s survivability, efficiency, and intelligence
with advanced bandwidth management and operations afforded by Ciena’s
multi-protocol switching platform to future proof the network.
Building on its existing coherent 40G terrestrial deployments with
Ciena’ s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, Southern Cross will augment its existing
network with additional 6500 platforms equipped with 40G and 100G
submarine-grade coherent line interfaces, which are designed to significantly
and cost-effectively increase submarine network capacity without disrupting
existing customer traffic or adding cost and complexity to the network.
With Ciena’s WaveLogic coherent technology, the network expansion will
involve a 400G capacity upgrade on each of the operator’s seven segments,
taking lit capacity on each cable to 1 Tb/s and total capacity on the network
to 2 Tb/s.
This will allow Southern Cross to continue offering fast, direct, and
secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the
continental United States. The implementation of the Ciena technology also
provides the base platform on which Southern Cross’ new generation of products,
such as 40GbE and OTN services, can be developed.
Southern Cross will also leverage Ciena’s 5430 and 5410 Reconfigurable
Switching Systems, which offer 3.6 Terabits per second (Tb/s) and 1.2 Tb/s of
OTN-based intelligent control plane-enabled switching capacity for bandwidth
aggregation and management. In addition to automating operations and
simplifying management, the 5400 platforms will allow Southern Cross to create
a survivable mesh-enabled submarine network architecture, which will significantly
minimize the risk of natural and manmade network disruptions, even under
multi-failure conditions.
Southern Cross is also deploying Ciena’s OneControl Unified Management
System for end-to-end management across Layers 0 and 1 on both the 6500 and
5400 platforms. This will provide Southern Cross Cable with a comprehensive
solution to manage their mission critical networks including multi-layer
intelligence for rapid service turn-up, unsurpassed visibility through protocol
layers for troubleshooting and efficient use of assets and bandwidth.
“Southern Cross continues to invest and build ahead of subscriber demand
to advance innovation and broadband growth. This upgrade takes our network
total capacity to 2 Tb/s, but with Ciena’s current technology our total
capacity can quickly expand to at least 7.2 Tb/s, highlighting our ability to
support demand from Australia’s NBN and New Zealand’s UFB initiatives. Ciena’s
industry-leading technology and customer-first approach ensures we can provide
even higher capacity wholesale offerings with more advanced capacity management
solutions both cost-effectively and with simple upgrade paths as demand
continues to rise,” Ross Pfeffer, director Sales & Marketing, Southern
Cross.
As part of the Ciena Specialist Services portfolio, Southern Cross will
also utilize Ciena’s Implementation Services to ensure the network is deployed
and commissioned accurately and on time. Ciena’s team of specialists will
provide Southern Cross local technical resources to install, test and turn-up
the network in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.
Deploying WaveLogic for greater capacity over long-reach terrestrial and
submarine routes, 5400 with multi-layer control plane intelligence to monetize
that capacity, OneControl for common management and Specialist Services for
dedicated support, Southern Cross is able to extract full value from its
existing network assets while advancing its time-to-market advantage and
position as the preferred Asia Pacific submarine cable network.
“This extension of our partnership with Southern Cross cable networks
for coherent technology and intelligent switching will enable significant
capacity and time-to-market advantage for this leading submarine network
operator. In addition, this deployment illustrates our successful
cross-portfolio product integration and our unmatched ability to provide a
complete, turn-key solution that allows our customers to build more intelligent
infrastructures with greater network efficiency, resiliency and service differentiation,” said
Anthony McLachlan, vice president and General Manager, Asia Pacific, Ciena.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
