BT Grows Capacity for 5G, FTTP with Ciena’s DCI Platform

To support growing traffic demands of 5G and FTTP, BT will deploy Ciena’s Waveserver™ stackable data center interconnect (DCI) platform to massively increase the capacity connecting its data centers to the UK’s main Internet peering nodes.

Ciena’s Waveserver provides BT with rapid network scalability to support mobile data growth from 5G, and growing residential broadband traffic driven by FTTP – while also reducing cost-per-bit through greater efficiency.

Key Facts:

•BT’s publicly stated plans to deploy 5G in 16 cities in 2019, coupled with forecasted residential broadband growth to remain at roughly 40 percent annually, means that significant new capacity is required in all areas of the network, and particularly on the main core links carrying this traffic.
•Ciena’s Waveserver enables BT to quickly, reliably, and more economically turn up larger and multiple low-latency connections to its data centers. Waveserver supports high-speed data transfer, virtual machine migration, disaster recovery and backup between data centers. With an extremely compact design that helps reduce real estate costs, Waveserver also provides rapid scalability and ease of deployment with up to 2.4T of capacity per stackable device to support surging bandwidth demands of web-scale data centers.
•To support its network automation and orchestration goals, BT will also deploy Ciena’s new domain controller: Blue Planet® Manage, Control and Plan which will enable BT to introduce the Waveserver quickly and easily.

“This deployment marks a significant step forward for UK telecoms. Today’s service providers are turning to tailor-made solutions that add capacity and programmability features with greater power and efficiency, enabling reduced cost per bit. With Ciena’s Waveserver platform, BT is creating a more adaptive network that can adjust as needed to meet changing subscriber demands,” said, Jamie Jefferies, Vice President & General Manager, EMEA, Ciena.

“We are launching 5G in 2019 across the busiest parts of 16 UK cities, and our FTTP footprint is growing on a daily basis. We have to stay ahead of the massive traffic growth that this brings, and the Ciena DCI platform ensures we can do that – quickly, making maximum use of automation,” explained, Neil J. McRae, Chief Architect, BT.