Nortel 40G solution used by Virgin Media

The deployment of a 40G submarine solution from Nortel will significantly increase the capacity of the current submarine cable link that runs between Ireland and the UK according to the network operator Virgin Media.

Nortel had previously worked with Virgin Media to roll out 40Gbps technology across its network before improving the capacity provided through the submarine link. At present Virgin Media operates a fibre optic cable that was laid under the Irish Sea and runs between Ireland and the UK providing a speed of 10Gbps. Virgin Media will now be able to offer its users broadband services throughout the UK at super-fast connection speeds following the work carried out by Nortel that has increased the capacity of both terrestrial and submarine parts of the network by a factor of four with almost no disruption to its customers.

The new innovative Adaptive optical Engine solution provided by Nortel will allow network operators to increase the capacity of their network by four immediately and in the future will allow them to increase it by ten whilst still maintaining its reach and performance according to its claims, and this is because it provided the most basic migration path from 10G to 40G and then up to 100G.

The ability to reach 40Gbps and 100Gbps using infrastructures that already exist and even fibre optic network that are currently considered marginal even for 10Gbps transmissions are achieved using Nortel’s advanced digital signal processing techniques, and means that operators no longer have any need to upgrade their current equipment.

The lack of upgrading required by the Nortel system is very important due to the fact that the shipping lanes between the UK and Ireland are very busy and the cable used by Virgin is 238km long advised the head of Metro Ethernet Networks Sales at Nortel, Peter Newcombe.

Source – TMCNet