The Optical Networks Future: Open and Disaggregated

In recent months we’ve been busy giving our global optical network infrastructure a major makeover. Our mission – to jump-start a new era of network innovation and interoperability that will prove transformative for all our customers. So, what exactly have we been up to?

Having one of the largest global optical transmission network footprints we are constantly evolving and extending our network and making it more flexible, responsive – and automated – to cope with the fast-evolving needs of today’s customers. But that’s not all.

As one of the first Tier 1 operators to push for openness in our Optical networks, our trail blazing deployment of open optical line technologies across the globe with various key fiber routes added to the network has transformed how customers can extract value from their networks – and paves the way to a future-proofed tomorrow.

Why the future is open and disaggregated

Traditionally, the end-to-end optical network was a ‘closed’ or locked proprietary system that was difficult to evolve. But today’s open line technologies have changed the rules of the game. Enabling us to unbundle our network components and utilize the best possible combination of hardware and software to enable an era of new and highly flexible networking capabilities.

The past year has seen us disaggregate and re-engineer our global optical network for even greater efficiency and agility. Our new open and interoperable network architectures can accommodate different technologies at both platform and component level. Making it possible for us to introduce game-changing, best-in-class, technologies and infrastructure capabilities at the drop of a hat.

What this means for our customers

Designed to serve the fast-evolving needs of customers, our next-generation network leverages automation for enhanced availability and faster service activation. Most recently, this bandwidth-on-demand facility proved mission critical, when the impact of COVID-19 meant businesses everywhere had to respond fast to rocketing connectivity demands.

Powerful new service orchestration capabilities now give customers the freedom to scale and adjust bandwidth to support dynamic workloads, and provision new services not only much faster but at a much lower cost (thanks to openness) and higher availability (thanks to simpler disaggregated building blocks). This new network architecture also makes it easier for us to integrate new technologies and deliver the innovation capabilities our customers need to solve their business problems effectively.

Designed for massive scalability and service agility, our new super-charged optical network delivers more capacity and more performance. Representing the next milestone in connectivity, we’re ready to enable the next wave of digital transformation.

If you’d like to know more about our global network, click here.

Sumita Sharma, Head of Transmission Networks