Telefónica España and Alcatel-Lucent carry out successful trial of 100 Gbps, 200 Gbps and 400 Gbps data transmissions over an optical network

ndustry-first breakthrough for agile optical networking with successful demonstration of different transmission speeds providing networks with flexibility to meet increasing demands on data

 

Madrid, April 16, 2013 – Telefónica España and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext and NYSE: ALU) have today announced an industry breakthrough in addressing the ever-escalating demand for broadband traffic on data networks by successfully completing a field trial of flexible optical networking.

The solution, which employs “agile optical networking” technology, more than doubles an operator’s fiber capacity without having to invest in additional optical fiber infrastructure. The trial, made using Telefónica live network in Spain, successfully demonstrated the capacity of Telefónica España existing network to operate at different combinations of line rate, reach, and spectrum width to provide the best balance between network performance and resource usage.

With the advances proven in the trial, Telefónica España will be able to meet the ever growing capacity demand of its customers. It will also use the new network flexibility to increase overall network resilience in working around outages or failures by diverting capacity to where it is needed in the network. GMPLS-based control plane intelligence will allow new ways for protecting highly meshed traffic dynamically so that subscribers can have their expectations met even when there are one or more failures in the network.

Key Facts:

• The Alcatel-Lucent/Telefónica España trial is a technology breakthrough: the first live network link running at 100 Gbps, 200 Gbps and 400 Gbps speeds using agile optical networks.
• Telefónica España is testing innovative technology to augment network capacity and resilience based on dynamic allocation of resources in the network putting the capacity where it is most needed at a particular time.
• Trial successfully demonstrated flexible optical networking with adaptive 100 Gbps/200 Gbps/400 Gbps transmission on a live network through the live optical channel successfully adapting to different speeds, distances and spectrum.
• This technology enables maximizing fiber performance: each channel is assigned just the piece of spectrum required for the performance needed in each case, and adjusts the parameters to have optimum speed/distance balance.
• The trial has demonstrated the capacity of Telefónica España network to scale up by a factor of 2.66 to 23 Terabits per second (Tbps) in a single fibre pair.

Quotes:

Manuel Fernández Daza, Director Access, Aggregation and Transport Networks Technology and Planning at Telefónica España said: “The future integration of 400 Gbps in our core network will enable us answering with optimum quality our clients’ ever growing demand for more bandwidth. Solutions that make the best use of our existing infrastructure, like the photonic mesh technology demonstrated in this trial, are how we will maintain our lead in the marketplace.”

Roque Lozano, President Alcatel-Lucent Spain and Global Account Manager for Telefónica said: “The success of this trial is a prime example of how Alcatel-Lucent works closely with our customers to bring new solutions to the marketplace in order to meet ever changing demands. Telefónica trusted us to perform what we said we would do on their network, and we did. We have a long standing track record in delivering 100Gbps coherent solutions to service providers around the world and we’ve made significant strides in developing and bringing to market a solid 400 Gbps offering.”

Technical details of trial:

• To perform the trial, the photonic mesh of Telefónica España at Catalonia was equipped with Alcatel-Lucent’s new 400G adaptive-modulation transponder and flexible grid ROADM integrated in the 1830 Photonic Service Switch.
• The field trial was carried out over an operational 1830 PSS mesh network carrying 40Gbps channels with live traffic. New 100 Gbps, 200 Gbps, and 400 Gbps light paths were established using PDM-QPSK and PDM-16QAM formats: 100Gbps and 200Gbps channels were provisioned with either 50GHz or 37.5GHz spacing, while 400Gbps channels were tested using either  100GHz or 75GHz spacing.
• The maximum tested distance was around 650 km, on the longest available path in the network. Commercially available flexible grid ROADMs were used to create 37.5GHz and 75GHz channels.
• All channel configurations were generated using the new 400Gbps module based on the Alcatel-Lucent 400Gbps Photonic Service Engine chip, featuring real-time coherent detection and soft-decision FEC. The switch among different operating modes only involved software commands.

About Telefónica

Telefónica is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world in terms of market capitalisation and number of customers. From this outstanding position in the industry, and with its mobile, fixed and broadband businesses as the key drivers of its growth, Telefónica has focused its strategy on becoming a leading company in the digital world.  The company has a significant presence in 24 countries and a customer base that amounts close to 316 million accesses around the world. Telefónica has a strong presence in Spain, Europe and Latin America, where the company focuses an important part of its growth strategy.

For more information about Telefónica, visit http://www.telefonica.com.

 

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