And NBN Co, the state-run company that runs the NBN, will be able to upgrade seamlessly to 400Gbps when and where required.
“Our transit network is the backbone of the NBN multi-technology mix that aims to provide Australians with access to fast services,” said Kathrine Dyer, NBN Co’s chief network deployment officer. “This upgrade will ensure we can continue to deliver a reliable and high-quality broadband access network for our wholesale customers even as high-bandwidth applications and the growth of internet usage continue to drive demand for network capacity.”
The company is using optical technology from Coriant, the company created five years ago out of Tellabs, Sycamore Networks and the optical networking interests of Siemens.
Coriant said that the network upgrade enables NBN Co to double bandwidth capacity with state-of-the-art coherent optical technology that supports per-wavelength transmission rates of 200Gbps, and raises the maximum capacity on the transit network from 9.6Tbps to 19.2Tbps.
NBN Co has started the upgrade in the Sydney area and on the 3,600km route linking Brisbane and Darwin. The transit network has 60,000km of fibre to connect 121 points of interconnect with service providers.
NBN is building a wholesale network across Australia that aims to connect 11.7 million premises by 2020. The company announced at the end of August 2018 that it expects 8.1 million activations by then: businesses and consumers have contracts with retail providers such as Optus and Telstra using NBN infrastructure.
