Displaying items by tag: Capacity

Telecom Review, the leading global telecoms news platform, held a virtual panel on 21 July, attended by 346 participants, to discuss the latest and most pressing issues in the wholesale and capacity space. Telecom Review mobilized an impressively unique panel with representatives from Etisalat, MTN GlobalConnect, PCCW Global, Tata Communications, SES, Orange and GBI.

Following the success of its previous virtual events, the panel titled, ‘Capacity and data traffic: Enabling a seamless experience’, was held at 16:00 UAE time on July 21^st.

The session was moderated by Founder of Telecom Review and CEO of Trace Media, Toni Eid, and the panelists included: Ali Amiri, Group Chief Carrier & Wholesale Officer at Etisalat; Frederic Schepens, CEO of MTN GlobalConnect; Marc Halbfinger, CEO of PCCW Global; Vaneet Mehta, AVP & Region Head- MECAA at Tata Communications; Elias Zaccack, EVP of Global Sales at SES; Cengiz Oztelcan, CEO of GBI and Emmanual Rochas, CEO, International Carriers at Orange.

The globally renowned panelists discussed the management of the sheer amount of data which was generated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the role of the cloud in ensuring a seamless remote experience and the challenges that COVID-19 posed to the wholesale industry.

Ali Amiri, Group Chief Carrier & Wholesale Officer at Etisalat, said, "Organizations were less concerned about security and remote working because of cloud readiness. Everyone has to be cloud equipped and this showed during the pandemic. This was really quite important that people could connect from anywhere and from any device.”

Frederic Schepens, CEO of MTN GlobalConnect, stated, “When COVID-19 hit our operations, we already had more backups and strengthened networks. In certain markets, we saw 30-35% growth. Voice also increased because people were calling each other to make sure everyone was OK. As an industry, we can do a lot of good to make sure we support all these changes with a reliable, robust infrastructure and also ensure that we facilitate the digitization process.”

Marc Halbfinger, CEO of PCCW Global, said, “The one thing that I’m certain of as a result of COVID-19 is that I’m not certain of anything. The situation has made forecasting an art form. We need to consider as many possibilities as may exist. We don’t know when this issue will be resolved or how governments will deal with it. COVID-19 has demonstrated that anything that is driving new age automation is necessary.”

On the business Impact of COVID 19, Vaneet Mehta, Region Head, Tata Communications, mentioned, “In terms of wholesale segment, we had growth in data traffic, on account of OTT content consumption. But the enterprise segment saw decision making getting delayed.”

Vaneet, was still bullish on the enterprise segment, in markets like Saudi Arabia, UAE and certain select countries of Africa. He also touched upon the recent news of the recent Tata Communications local telecom license in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Elias Zaccack, EVP of Global Sales at SES, said, “Without dismissing the severity of COVID-19, we are seeing is a lot of opportunities.  One of those opportunities is digitization. A lot of countries are moving a lot faster to digitization. What we have realized is just how essential satellites are to the global infrastructure.”

“For many years we’ve been talking about digitalization, we also learnt that most governments are nowhere near being digital especially during the lockdown. We suffered a lot of time wastage in terms of organizing basic processes. Also, security is currently in the back burner because people are just trying to be connected. It’s a good time for us to think about this, but the market will demand better security eventually,” commented Cengiz Oztelcan, CEO of GBI.

Emmanual Rochas, CEO, International Carriers at Orange, said, “This crisis has been dramatic in terms of human impact. It also had a massive impact on our international wholesale business. We have experienced a very strong shift in usage in terms of our businesses. Our networks have either been emptied or overloaded. We have seen an increase in domestic voice whilst international voice suffered. We had a very strong increase in public networks due to increase in consumption of entertainment.”

Orange proceeded to land Google’s transatlantic Dunant cable in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, in the Vendée region of France, first and terrestrial stage of the laying of this cable.

This new 6,600 km long submarine cable linking the United States to France, posed by the company SubCom and scheduled to come into service before the end of 2020, is the result of a project combining Orange and Google. The Europe-United States axis is one of the most important submarine routes in the world with a need for connectivity that doubles every second year. Dunant will help to meet the explosion in Internet usage and guarantee ever more efficient connections for Orange and Google customers.

As the “Landing Party” and owner of the French part of the cable, Orange has completely refurbished the historic station in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, which was no longer in use, to house the terminal equipment for the Dunant system. This area is a strategic location, close to the main connectivity hubs on this side of the Atlantic. From this landing station, Orange is deploying terrestrial optical fibers in France between Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez and Paris to route its traffic on the Dunant cable to the capital's major data centers and will also provide service to the rest of Europe and major international data centers.

With this deployment, Orange will benefit from two pairs of optical fibers with a capacity of up to 30Tbp/s each, enough to transfer a 1GB video in 30 microseconds. Orange will thus be able to meet the massive growth in demand for data and content exchanged between Europe and the United States for several years to come.

Dunant will be the first submarine cable to connect the United States to France in more than 15 years and will be designed to combine the most advanced technologies from the world's various equipment suppliers. The cable will therefore be able to keep pace with innovation in optical transmission technologies and maintain its performance at the highest level for many years to come.

As a major investor in more than 40 submarine cables, Orange is committed to developing the quality of service of its global network. This new transatlantic project is one of the Group's many operations aimed at providing high-quality services to support its customers in their various uses.

Infinera and Corning Incorporated have announced an industry-leading achievement of delivering an 800 gigabits per second (800G) single wavelength with Infinera’s sixth-generation Infinite Capacity Engine (ICE6) technology across 800 kilometers (km) on Corning’s TXF® optical fiber.

The success of Infinera and Corning’s 800G trial demonstrates the benefits of an industry leading coherent 800G solution with superior fiber designed to help meet growing bandwidth demands for network operators from metro to subsea network applications.

The demonstration leveraged Infinera’s ICE6 technology in a Groove (GX) Series platform transmitting 800G using 64QAM with probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS). This record-breaking achievement was accomplished using Corning’s state-of-the-art TXF fiber, an ITU-T G.654.E compliant, ultra-low-loss, silica-core fiber with large effective area.

This demonstration highlighted the advanced features of Infinera’s vertically integrated ICE6 technology, including Nyquist subcarriers, per-subcarrier long-codeword PCS, and per-subcarrier dynamic bandwidth allocation.

“This demonstration proves that 800G transmission using Infinera’s industry-leading technology enables a wide variety of network applications and is further enhanced by Corning’s innovative TXF fiber,” said Parthi Kandappan, Chief Technology Officer at Infinera.

“This achievement is made possible by Infinera’s high degree of vertical integration including our in-house digital signal processor design, photonic integrated circuit design and manufacturing, and holistic in-house packaging.”

“We are pleased to work with Infinera to demonstrate how our combined leading-edge technologies can maximize capacity and reach,” said Jeanne Propst, division vice president, product line management, Optical Fiber and Cable, Corning Incorporated.

“Our TXF fiber, with its high-data-rate capabilities and exceptional reach, helps network operators stay ahead of growing bandwidth demands while lowering their overall network costs.”

ICE6 combines Infinera’s sixth-generation photonic integrated circuit with its in-house-developed 7-nanometer dual-channel 800G per-wave FlexCoherent® digital signal processor.

New Zealand’s leading communications service provider Spark has deployed the country’s first 200G per wavelength production fiber link by using Nokia’s Optical Transport Network (OTN). Spark has become the first in New Zealand to offer 200Gb/s (Gigabits-per-second) on a single wavelength thanks to Nokia technology.

The Nokia optical solution effectively doubles capacity while reducing cost per bit on the Spark fiber network. As a result, Spark is able to deliver more value and a better experience to its enterprise, retail mobile and broadband customers without the need for major investment in fiber optic cables and other CAPEX/OPEX-related costs.

The powerful yet flexible hardware and software allow customers to optimize their networks by balancing capacity and distance for individual wavelengths. Nokia's 200G channel can also co-exist with Spark's 10G and 100G channels, protecting the original network investment.

Spark's new 200Gbps network link connects its core network with the global gateway, and enables the service provider to stay ahead of the data demand curve for both residential and enterprise customers. It will help meet continuing strong business and consumer demand for data bandwidth, utilizing existing systems to efficiently boost capacity for current usage and future growth.200G provides a compelling business case for any operator looking to lower their total cost of ownership while still deploying extra speed and capacity in their existing 1830 PSS networks.

General Manager of Networks at Spark, Colin Brown, called the new technology a digital revolution and said Nokia had helped Spark reach a new milestone. He said: "Today's digital revolution is driving massive growth in data traffic, with businesses and consumers needing to instantly access and share information anytime, anywhere, doing so quickly, efficiently and securely. Nokia has helped Spark NZ reach a new milestone with our world-class Optical Transport Network, achieving our vision of a data-driven future for New Zealand and underpinning an integrated network including fiber, 3G, 4G, 4.5G, wireless broadband and Wi-Fi."

Head of Oceania at Nokia, Ray Owen said: “Like many operators, Spark has faced relentless growth in bandwidth demand, largely driven by an increase in video streaming by business and consumer users. By taking a flexible approach to this challenge with New Zealand's first 200Gbps fiber link, together with Nokia, Spark is well placed to meet continued demand growth while meeting existing user expectations.”