Ciena conducts terabit field trial with Saudi Arabia’s Mobily

Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) says via its blog that it conducted a live field trial of a 1-Tbps optical transmission across metro sites in Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh in partnership with Middle Eastern mobile operator Mobily.

The December 2013 trial saw Mobily’s network carry public sector and enterprise customer traffic over 40G and 100G wavelengths to create a terabit superchannel, the vendor says. The superchannel traversed an existing non-zero dispersion-shifted fiber (NDSF) in Mobily’s fiber-optic network. The trial indicates that Mobily will be able to upgrade its existing metro network to support 400-Gbps and 1-Tbps channels without modifications, Ciena says.

The feat was accomplished leveraging Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, powered by Ciena’s WaveLogic 3 coherent optical processors. The transmission used 16QAM modulation to achieve 4-bps/Hz of spectral efficiency, which equates to double what is possible with 100G systems today, according to Omar Alsaied, general manager and Middle East carrier sales director at Ciena.

“Mobily’s culture is built on innovation and fast execution, bringing the latest technology offerings to our customers,” the blog quoted Eng Nasser AlNasser, COO at Mobily, as saying. “The successful 1-Tbps trial, the first of its kind in the Middle East, is the next step in our network evolution. Ciena’s high-capacity Terabit optical technology will give us the flexibility and scalability to make 1Tbps a reality and deliver next-generation products and services to our customers.”

The terabit trial follows the activation of Mobily’s commercial 100G network in 2011 (see "Mobily and Ciena to deploy Middle East’s first 100G network in Riyadh").

This is Ciena’s second announced 1-Tbps transmission trail. Last year the company revealed that it had paired with Comcast for a live network trial of terabit speeds over Comcast’s production network in the U.S. (see "Comcast conducts terabit trial with Ciena's 6500 platform").

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.