Ciena announced that it has been selected as the
equipment vendor for BT 21st Century Network (21CN).
Ciena’s network implementation for BT will follow an
aggressive timeline, with the commercial roll-out scheduled to begin by end of
calendar 2011. The initial roll-out will include a single photonic layer
covering BT’s extensive network throughout the UK.
Service providers are increasingly relying on the
expertise of select suppliers to solve critical business challenges. The slow,
complicated and costly provisioning of basic consumer and enterprise services
combined with the well-established rise in capacity requirements and complexity
of network management are major threats facing carriers,” François Locoh-Donou,
Senior Vice President, Global Products Group at Ciena.
The infrastructure will be based on Ciena’s 6500
Packet-Optical Platform equipped with WaveLogic coherent optical processors
that support 10G and 40G/100G wavelengths offering BT a smooth migration path
to 100G and beyond, and addressing the network operator’s growing capacity
demands.
The 6500 platform will offer integrated OTN switching
with control plane functionality, which gives BT network intelligence to
optimize support of traffic types and seamlessly enable the delivery of groomed
wavelength services to its enterprise customers.
Ciena’s technology will deliver ROADM functionality,
which enables BT’s 21st Century Network to require fewer network elements while
enabling simplified operations, resulting in a fully agile network that
supports differentiated services and significant reduction in operating
expenses.
Ciena’s leading technology and unique approach to customer
partnerships served as key components in our supplier selection for this
strategic deployment. With this new infrastructure, we are continuing to invest
for the future by increasing core network capacity, at eventual speeds of 400G,
and simplifying management to push our network and services to the next level
of performance,” Neil J. McRae, chief network architect at BT.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
