Telecom Italia to upgrade its optical transmission backbone in collaboration with Alcatel

Alcatel will participate in the implementation of a project launched by Telecom Italia, the main Italian incumbent telecom operator, to expand and upgrade its Optical Transmission Backbone to address growing Gigabit Ethernet and ADSL service demand. For this initiative, Telecom Italia will deploy DWDM technology.

Alcatel will install its scalable 1640 WM system to give Telecom Italia the ability to grow its backbone capacity in step with the demands created by the increase in multi-media and Internet services. The Alcatel 1640 WM scales in service up to 1.6 Tbit/sec, which is the equivalent of over 20 million phone calls or 300,000 television signals, while offering Telecom Italia the lowest cost per bit transported available on the market today, claim company representatives. The DWDM links will be managed by the Alcatel network management solution, which is prearranged according to technical specifications provided by Telecom Italia and already in place for the existing SDH network. This will play an integral role in reducing the operating expenses for Telecom Italia.

"To deliver innovative services to our end users, we require increasingly scalable and easy-to-manage solutions, which combine operational efficiency and high performance," explains Stefano Pileri, network director of Telecom Italia. "Our goal is to grow together with our end-users and, to this goal, a flexible and extremely reliable network, from backbone to access, is key. New projects, such as the DWDM network, aim to combine high network performance and return on investments, guaranteeing network growth over time."