Airtel and Ciena build one of world’s largest photonic networks

Details: Category: Optical & Fixed Networks; 27 February 2019; 7976 views

India’s Bharti Airtel is deploying Ciena’s coherent optical and intelligent software platforms to build one of the world’s largest photonic control plane networks.

Airtel’s new backbone network will serve the exploding demand for high speed data services. It will also enable super-fast broadband experiences over 4G/5G/FTTH architectures, making the most efficient use of available fibre resources. The deployment is part of Project Leap - Airtel’s network transformation programme - and will also enable a network that can quickly respond to simultaneous faults by re-computing and re-routing traffic based on available network resources.

The new backbone architecture is designed to create a solid foundation that can cut across technology generations to seamlessly work with data rates of 400Gbit/s and higher to create a future proof scalable network. In addition, the architecture offers lower latency and software-controlled connectivity for cloud infrastructure, faster transformation to virtualised platforms, and 5G readiness.

“Airtel has always pioneered the introduction of cutting-edge network technologies to serve its customers. We are pleased to work with Ciena to build one of world’s largest optical spine and leaf networks, which is also a big step towards 5G readiness by leveraging our huge fibre assets,” said Bharti Airtel CTO, Randeep Sekhon.” This will not only scale our network for massive capacity, but also protect traffic and enhance service delivery to all our customers. It will also help Airtel further strengthen its position as a key enabler of digital experiences in an increasingly connected world.”