Columbus Networks, Xtera bring 100G to the Caribbean

Columbus Networks, a wholesale communications service provider in the pan Caribbean/Americas region, says that it has deployed 100-Gbps technology on its existing high-capacity network in Panama using equipment from Xtera Communications, Inc. The company claims it is the first to deploy 100G in the region.

Columbus Networks recently bolstered its network capacity by deploying an optical ring network between Maria Chiquita and Plaza Obario, Panama City, using Xtera’s Nu-Wave Optima platform. The new network provides diverse routing of services from Panama to Columbus Networks’ international fiber-optic backbone. By upgrading the network to include 100G optical channel technology from Xtera, Columbus Networks says it reinforces its commitment to use the latest technology not only to support today’s services, but also to meet the increased demands from emerging cloud services, data center operations and other high-capacity content distribution services.

"The global build-out of data centers, coupled with rapid deployment of cloud based services, are driving renewed demand for ever higher fixed and burst rate connections and emphasis on high availability through redundancy,” said Peter Collins, chief technology officer at Columbus Networks. “Our goal is to proactively prepare our networks with the right technology to efficiently address both today's and tomorrow's evolving business needs.

“Our Panama Network uses the latest Nu-Wave Optima DWDM platform from Xtera and we noticed they have been very active in the deployment of 100G networks around the world,” added Collins. “Thus, it was natural for us to turn to them to gain experience with the technology.”

According to Xtera, the Nu-Wave Optima platform was the first 100G equipment with soft-decision forward error correction (FEC) to be deployed in the field. For terrestrial backbone networks, the Nu-Wave Optima equipment delivers a line capacity of 15 Tbps over more than 3,000 km. For unrepeatered applications, a capacity of 34 x 100G was recently transmitted over a cable attenuation exceeding 74 dB.

Xtera has been making a lot of noise about 100G in the last few months. Recent announcements include what is billed as the world’s largest 100G deployment, a 22,000-km backbone network for CFE Telecom (see “Mexico's CFE Telecom taps Xtera for 100G network”); and what the company claims is the first 100G repeatered subsea cable system to be put in commercial service (see “GBI, Xtera claim first repeatered 100-Gbps cable system”).

“Today, 100G technology offers a compelling combination of performance and price for efficient high-capacity optical networking,” said Herve Fevrier, EVP and COO of Xtera.

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