The trial successfully demonstrates the ability of Orange’s network to increase its optical capacity to support end-to-end 400Gbps services.
Specifically, Orange was able to validate a planned upgrade of its long-haul backbone networks to support new high bandwidth 400Gbps services, as well as the ability to scale fibre capacity up to 600Gbps. This represents an increase in spectral efficiency of 50% compared to previous technologies on its long-haul network.
“With the booming market bandwidth requirement and need for scalability and flexibility, it is important that Orange continues to support an ever-greater network scale and new high-bandwidth services across our terrestrial and subsea global footprint," said Jean-Luc Vuillemin (pictured), vice president of international networks and services at Orange.
"Validating super coherent optics with Nokia represents an important enabler for future-proof networks which will bring spectral efficiency and operational deployment flexibility to our customer solutions. Furthermore, this technology will allow for power savings by nearly 50%, which is key to our objective of developing greener networks for our customers.”
The trial was performed in real-world conditions using Nokia PSE-Vs super coherent optics in production-ready optical transport hardware, just 16 months following the lab prototype trial carried out on Orange’s live network.
Orange and Nokia verified error-free performance at a data rate of 600Gbps over a 914km network between Paris and Biarritz. The fibre network was comprised of 13 spans of Orange’s existing network, through multiple cascaded reconfigurable optical add/drop multipliers, using 100GHz WDM spectrum channels.
“We are delighted to work with Orange in continued support of their network upgrade plans," said James Watt, head of optical networks division at Nokia.
"With the introduction of the PSE-Vs super coherent capabilities across our entire 1830 portfolio, Nokia enables spectrally efficient transport at 600Gbps over real-world long-haul networks, and 400Gbps services over ultra-long haul networks spanning multiple 1000’s of kilometres.”