CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL) has partnered with Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) to deploy 1-Tbps optical transmission signals via superchannel on part of its central Florida fiber-optic network. The trial took place earlier this month.
The Tier 1 U.S. service provider employed Ciena's 6500 packet-optical transport platform to create the superchannel, which comprised five 200-Gbps wavelengths. The packet transport hardware leveraged Ciena's WaveLogic 3 coherent transmission processor, 16QAM modulation, and a flexible grid-based photonic layer.
"This 1-Tbps trial complements the work we are doing to transform our network and prepares us to meet our customers' growing bandwidth needs now and into the future," said James Feger, vice president, CenturyLink network strategy and development. "Being able to quickly scale our network's capacity to keep up with increasing bandwidth demands means that customers will continue to have a positive experience using our cloud, hosted IT, and high-speed broadband services, as well as video services like CenturyLink Prism TV."
CenturyLink has deployed the 6500 packet-optical transport system throughout its network (see "CenturyLink targets Ciena platforms for metro 100G requirements").
"Ciena and CenturyLink have a longstanding relationship and this trial demonstrates the future-proof nature of Ciena's high-capacity terabit optical technology, which is designed to help network operators adjust the latency and capacity of their networks so that they can thrive in today's app-centric world," said Francois Locoh-Donou, senior vice president, global products group, Ciena.
This is at least the third terabit trial Ciena has announced, following similar workouts with Comcast and Mobily (see "Comcast conducts terabit trial with Ciena's 6500 platform" and "Ciena conducts terabit field trial with Saudi Arabia’s Mobily").
For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.