Our plans for 2021

Whilst the world continues to address the challenges the global pandemic has created, the vaccination programmes now under way offer us all an opportunity to start looking forward.  At Telia Carrier, we’ve got lots of exciting things on the horizon for 2021, but we should also take a moment to look at what we achieved in 2020, whilst focussing on the wellbeing of our staff and partners.

We’re immensely proud of the role everybody at Telia Carrier has played in what was a remarkable year.

Our network grew substantially.  We are continuously expanding our footprint wherever we see content demand. Last year, we added 30 PoPs across Europe, North America and Mexico – the majority of these in the US. Today, over 65% of the global routing table is directly connected to AS1299. Check out our network here.

Still #1.  According to Dyn Research, we are still the ranked #1 backbone provider in 4 out of 6 regions. Everyone’s incredibly hard work kept Telia Carrier right at the top of our game, with our AS1299 fibre backbone and industry leading connectivity making us the ‘go to’ network to keep enterprises at the top of theirs.

We pushed the boundaries.  We continued to advance the technology that underpins our network and invested heavily in R&D:

• We were the first Tier 1 provider to implement RPKI routing security, which prevents hackers from advertising prefixes, stealing traffic and denying transactions.
• Our work with Ciena and Infinera line systems mean we could implement an Open Photonic Layer for DWDM, which allows to very competitively deliver 3^rd party transponders.
• We announced live network testing of disaggregated 400G coherent optics (400ZR/ZR+) to simplify and scale the routed network beyond customer demand. This will enable us to scale our IP backbone and add more metro connectivity in a more efficient way.
• We delivered Terabit scale end-to-end network solutions using new transatlantic subsea cabling systems using six different routes for the IP backbone traffic to ensure resilience as well as speed.

Looking into 2021

This year is going to see us building further on the achievements of 2020. For example, last year we successfully mitigated peak attacks exceeding 990Gbps and 880Mpps. We are now investing further in our security capabilities, enhancing our DDoS mitigation solution with automation and new reporting features.

We will of course continue to add new PoPs where needed to meet traffic demands, but we will also be scaling up the underlying network core.  Following our 400G trials in 2020, new technology from Cisco and Arista will be deployed across the core, and we will be investing further in our long-haul DWDM infrastructure across the US and EU, bringing even lower latency and enabling more agile handling of multi-Tb/s traffic.

Another thing to look out for is the number of new features we’ll be adding that give you greater network transparency, making it possible for you to monitor, manage and even automate services on your network.  Shortly, customers will also gain real-time alerts for managed wavelength services, making you immediately aware of any change in status on the parameters you define.

2021 is going to be an exciting year for us at Telia Carrier, and with our customers front of mind we’ll be working hard to make sure our network continues to provide the best services in the world to meet their needs.

Andy Haynes, COO