Optus picks Nokia to demo 800 Gigabit long haul optical transport services

Optus has become the first carrier in the Australian market to hit speeds of 800Gbps across its high-speed, ultra-low-latency production optical long-haul network between Sydney and Melbourne. The successful 800Gbps field trial spanning distances of approximately 1,400km was completed on Optus’ operational 400Gbps system, on both coastal and inland routes between the two capital cities Sydney and Melbourne, facilitated by leveraging the spectrum sharing capabilities of Optus’ existing long-haul network.

The live network trial was undertaken with Optus' longstanding partner Nokia, leveraging its latest sixth-generation super-coherent Photonic Service Engine; PSE-6s, supporting 2.4Tbps capacity per card. The solution was built to address Optus’ wholesale and enterprise customer needs, including additional capacity and low-latency connectivity on the Optus inter-capital fibre network.

John Harrington, Senior Vice President of Asia Pacific and Japan at Nokia, said, “At Nokia we are proud of continuing our long-lasting partnership with Optus, supporting the incredible traffic growth that is being observed in the global and local wholesale market. We believe with PSE-6s-enabled optical transport solutions, Optus will be well positioned to address the continuous market expansion. With support for speeds ranging from 400Gbs to 2.4Tbs, Nokia's solution will deliver connectivity over subsea, long haul, regional and metro / data centre interconnect distances with the most power efficient capability in the industry.”

Optus has also awarded the refresh of the Melbourne-Adelaide-Perth route to Nokia, with the ability to provide unregenerated end-to-end services over a distance of 4,000km, at minimum 400Gbps per channel. This is accomplished by leveraging the Nokia PSE-6s solution which provides a total capacity of up to 28.8Tbps over the route. This network upgrade is scheduled to be operational by 2024 and will deliver high-speed connectivity between the East and West coast of Australia, to serve growing demands from the market domestically and internationally.

John Castro, Vice President, Wholesale and Satellite at Optus, said, “Optus is excited to demonstrate to our customers and the market the latest innovation to improve technology transport. The incredible speeds we can hit between Sydney and Melbourne and our ability to demonstrate our spectrum sharing capabilities are a true testament of the benefits that lay ahead, and our commitment to the Australian market seeing they happen, alongside Nokia.

“By providing super-fast connectivity between Sydney and Melbourne, our two major economic hubs, Optus will demonstrate our commitment to pushing the boundaries to ensure our customers have world-class connectivity and speeds all the way to Perth.”

Optus can hit speeds of 800Gbps transport services thanks to Nokia’s sixth generation of super-coherent PSE-6s alongside current channels which support 400Gbps and 600Gbps capacity over some routes using PSE-V technology. The Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Switch with its flagship chipset PSE-6s, also enables Optus to add capacity and provide high-speed, low-latency connectivity with optimal footprint, efficiently and with reduced power consumption.