Bharti Expands i2i Submarine Cable with Ciena

Coherent optics and advanced network management solutions add intelligent network capabilities, delivering bandwidth-intensive services across important regional gateway

Ciena Corporation, the network specialist, has announced that i2i, a venture of Bharti Airtel Limited, has completed a submarine network upgrade spanning from India to Singapore using Ciena’s converged packet optical and network management solutions.

The upgrade leverages a flexible 100G ROADM-based infrastructure that has enabled Bharti to increase capacity over the i2i cable and respond to a surging demand for high-bandwidth data services driven by both enterprise applications and an increasing use of mobile bandwidth across the region.

Ciena’s network management solutions bring expanded intelligence to the i2i cable, delivering rapid service turn-up & proactive fault recovery, features that are critical to managing a high-performance submarine link.

i2i is a submarine cable owned by Bharti Airtel Limited of India. The high-capacity cable spans 3,200 kilometers and connects Singapore and Chennai, India. Powered by Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, equipped with WaveLogic 3 processors, this submarine upgrade leveraged a combination of coherent optical technology and wavelength selective switching to enable rapid remote configuration of traffic across the i2i cable. A commitment to intelligent and scalable network designs, both key elements of Ciena’s OPn architecture, allowed i2i to implement this upgrade quickly, ensuring that new capacity was ready and available according to Bharti’s customers’ demand.

This deployment builds on a long-standing relationship between Bharti and Ciena. Ciena’s suite of converged packet optical solutions plays an important role in the company’s network, providing high-capacity long-haul and regional services.

“This upgrade is an excellent example of how the sophistication of Ciena’s converged packet optical and unified management solutions can help transform our customer’s networks to seize new business opportunities. Working with submarine operators to understand the demands being placed on their cables has given Ciena the expertise needed to help our customers scale their networks intelligently, turning new capacity rapidly into new sources of revenue.” Ryan Perera, Country Head for India, Ciena.

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