- 800 Gb/s ring launched in collaboration with Ciena to serve 23 cities and six ‘super core’ sites.
- Part of a multi-terabit, national backbone project to underpin CityFibre’s 8 million home Full Fibre rollout.
- Utilises Ciena’s advanced optical technology to enable enhanced service experience, full network automation and future product roadmap.
November 24, 2021, LONDON and HANOVER, Md.: CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent Full Fibre platform, has announced the successful deployment of its first 800 Gb/s backbone wavelength in partnership with leading network technology solutions vendor, Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings). This is a key milestone on CityFibre’s path to building a Full Fibre digital infrastructure that will reach up to 8 million premises in the UK.
The initial 800 Gb/s wavelength serves 23 cities and towns and connects six ‘super core’ sites in 2021, with the first ring connecting Leicester, Peterborough, Cambridge, London, Milton Keynes and Northampton. Swiftly followed in 2022 with two further rings, providing the same enhanced core capacity between Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Bristol, Coventry and London.
With an additional 90 locations due to be added before the end of 2023, this is the first phase of a national, multi-terabit, Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) network deployment. Once complete, CityFibre will own and operate a high availability, fully scalable backbone, enabled by Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme programmable 800G coherent optics, 6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS) and Manage, Control, Plan (MCP) intelligent domain controller.
With fully diverse routing throughout, the network will connect CityFibre’s own fibre exchanges and ring-based access networks to leading third party datacentres and points of interconnect. The Full Fibre network will support virtually unlimited data transfer requirements for the future enabling a fully automated, cloud-based platform with open access API integration.
CityFibre’s priority is to support the high-quality, efficient delivery of broadband, Ethernet and IP services across a £4 billion investment programme. This includes scaling the new National Access product that launched earlier this month.
In addition to boosting regional aggregation capability, the use of Colourless, Directionless, Contentionless (CDC) optical technology will help it continue to build a network that is better by design, raising service experience benchmarks and enabling open access, high bandwidth Ethernet and wavelength services of up to 400 Gb/s to be wholesaled in the future.
David Tomalin, Group Chief Technology Officer at CityFibre, said: “A significant challenge for service providers today is securing scalable, reliable and independent national service aggregation. Constrained by legacy footprints, poor SLA’s and lack of innovation, this investment will create a superior, physically diverse network alternative, whilst raising the service experience bar for our industry.
We are already using full CDC in all our major nodes and will scale this across our entire backbone network over time. Its automation capability will enable additional rapid network restoration in the event of fibre or hardware failure, plus greater flexibility to grow capacity, balance, and re-programme our network based on the evolving needs of our customers.”
Jamie Jefferies, Vice President and General Manager, International at Ciena, commented: “Deploying Ciena’s coherent optic technology at scale will help CityFibre to provide market leading digital services across the UK. CityFibre have been tremendous to work with and our shared determination has allowed for us to move from design to delivery of this 800Gbps network in record time. CityFibre and its customers will benefit from the scalability and adaptability its network will possess, in particular because Ciena’s intelligent RLS CDC configuration leverages a modern modular software design that allows for open networking and maximum programmability. We look forward to a continued collaboration in the future.”
###
About CityFibre
CityFibre is the UK’s largest independent Full Fibre infrastructure platform. We provide digital infrastructure that enables our wholesale customers to provide ultra-fast, reliable and futureproof broadband, ethernet and 5G services to homes and businesses and other sites such as schools, hospitals and GPs surgeries. CityFibre’s £4bn Full Fibre network rollout programme is on track to serve up to a third of the UK by 2025; representing up to 8m homes, 800k businesses, 400k local authority sites and 250k 5G access points. CityFibre has already announced 285 cities, towns and villages that will receive a transformational digital upgrade as part of our nationwide rollout. As the nation’s only 100% Full Fibre wholesale network, CityFibre is trusted by major Internet Service Providers and mobile operators including TalkTalk, Three, Vodafone and Zen and is actively supporting a new generation of smaller regional ISPs dedicated to delivering Full Fibre Broadband. CityFibre is based in London and is owned by Antin Infrastructure Partners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Mubadala Investment Company and Interogo Holding.
About Ciena
Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is a networking systems, services and software company. We provide solutions that help our customers create the Adaptive Network in response to the constantly changing demands of their end-users. By delivering best-in-class networking technology through high-touch consultative relationships, we build the world’s most agile networks with automation, openness and scale. For updates on Ciena, follow us on Twitter @Ciena, LinkedIn, the Ciena Insights blog, or visit www.ciena.com.
Note to Ciena Investors
You are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website, where we routinely post press releases, SEC filings, recent news, financial results, and other announcements. From time to time we exclusively post material information to this website along with other disclosure channels that we use. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements that are based on our current expectations, forecasts, information and assumptions. These statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those stated or implied, because of risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in our most recent annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding our expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies and can be identified by words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “should,” “will,” and “would” or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Press Contacts:
James Gilheany james.gilheany@cityfibre.com
Jamie Moody pr@ciena.com
Investor Contact:
Gregg Lampf ir@ciena.com
+++
PR Archives: Latest, By Company, By Date