6 November 2003 Ottawa, Ontario Lightwave -- Nortel Networks has announced three new optical enterprise customers: the Los Angles Dept. of Water and Power (LA DWP), Vermont Electric Power (VELCO), and ENMAX Envision, a division of ENMAX Energy in Calgary, Canada. All three utility companies are using Nortel's Optical Enterprise products to extract greater value from their existing networks--either through network improvements or new service offerings.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
L.A. DWP has deployed a metropolitan optical network solution from Nortel to provide optical broadband services to city departments, carriers, Internet Service Providers, and enterprises in the greater Los Angeles Area. The new network--dubbed Los Angeles Optical Network or LAON--provides resilient, high-speed, on-demand access to virtually unlimited bandwidth for support of community and economic development initiatives.
To bring optical broadband services to greater Los Angeles, which ranks as the 12th largest economy in the world, LA DWP has deployed Nortel's Passport 8600 Routing Switches, the OPTera Metro 3500 Multiservice Platform, and the OPTera Connect DX Optical Switches to create a flexible network that connects approximately 150 buildings spanning more than 300 miles.
"As a city department, we seek new ways to serve our community," explains Bruce Hamer, director of the Los Angeles DWP Fiber Optic Enterprise. "Our optical network gives us a unique opportunity to leverage the assets we have as an electric and water utility to accelerate business development and improve community services in Los Angeles. Because LAON will generate economic growth for the community, it was vital that it be of the highest reliability, speed and capacity--features found in the optical solutions from Nortel Networks."
"Utility and Energy Service companies have a unique benefit with optical solutions from Nortel Networks because they deploy the solutions both as enterprises and as emerging service providers," adds Steve Schilling, president, Enterprise Accounts, Nortel Networks. "LA DWP will be able to increase the bandwidth and performance of its own network, while cost-effectively delivering converged voice, data, and video services."
Vermont Electric Power Co.
VELCO, a Rutland-based transmission company owned by 22 distribution utilities in Vermont, recently completed statewide deployment of Optical Ethernet solutions from Nortel.
Using the OPTera Metro 3500 Multiservice Platforms with Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) technology, VELCO has converged data and voice services over the same infrastructure. By leveraging the reliability and high-bandwidth of SONET with the simplicity and low-cost of Ethernet, VELCO's Optical Ethernet deployment is expected to enhance day-to-day operations while helping VELCO to drive reliability and resiliency for mission-critical power services.
Additionally, the broadband connections now available at each utility substation give VELCO the ability to support new, high-bandwidth applications to enhance employee productivity, reduce time-to-service, improve information sharing, and make better use of network assets.
"With the increased bandwidth available through our Optical Ethernet network, we have increased our ability to gather information and understand business--without impacting the performance of our critical systems," reports Dan Nelson, head of Information Systems and Telecommunications, VELCO. "As a result, we have improved our ability to share information, reduced the risk of service impacting outages, and improved the efficiency of our network."
With OPTera Metro 3500 Multiservice Platforms distributed throughout Vermont, the network is organized into two interconnected OC-48 rings. With this configuration, the infrastructure can be shared between all VELCO substations with no single point of failure.
VELCO's optical network marks one of the largest enterprise deployments of Nortel Networks' RPR technology. The technology enables efficient use of network resources by supporting flexible bandwidth sharing between devices on the ring. For example, VELCO can dedicate part of the ring to support system control and monitoring applications like SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), while using the excess capacity for other, performance-enhancing and cost-saving applications.
"Optical Ethernet solutions are giving utility companies like VELCO the opportunity to leverage their network assets to support new applications and explore new service offerings--all while driving reduced costs and reduced network complexity," asserts Marco Pagani, president, Optical Ethernet and Storage Solutions, Nortel Networks. "With the Optical Ethernet solution in place, VELCO will see an increase of available bandwidth, allowing them to improve on traditional utility functions while offering new services like Internet access, video surveillance, high-speed remote access, and digital image transfer, just to name a few."
ENMAX Envision
Nortel and ENMAX recently completed of one of the first metro area networks in Canada based entirely on Optical Ethernet. The network leverages the utility company's extensive fiber infrastructure, simplifying operations and facilitating delivery of optical broadband services to local businesses. Using the Optical Ethernet network, ENMAX can offer high-bandwidth data services targeted to customers' specific needs, such as private line in, transparent LAN extension, dedicated Internet access, and business continuity/disaster recovery solutions.
ENMAX Envision recently added Nortel's OPTera Metro 1400 Ethernet Service Module to its network, expanding the service offering to include Ethernet Virtual Private Network (VPN) capabilities. These capabilities provide increased scalability while ensuring security and quality of service.
"We needed a networking solution that gave us the flexibility to tailor our services as needed to meet the unique requirements of our customers," says Richard Turski, general manager, ENMAX Envision. "Nortel Networks proven optical solutions have enabled us to surpass our networking requirements, offering high-bandwidth services in flexible increments and expanded service offerings."
The Optical Ethernet network involved the creation of three DWDM rings, connecting substations throughout the city using the OPTera Metro 5200 Multiservice Platform. The Passport 8600 Routing Switches provide Gigabit Ethernet connections into the metro DWDM network, with Nortel's BayStack BPS 2000 providing high-density Ethernet access at the customer premises.
ENMAX Envision is currently expanding the network to include recently announced enhancements to Nortel's Optical Ethernet portfolio that are designed to drive Ethernet services growth. The OPTera Metro 1400 allows ENMAX Envision to use a cost-effective, shared infrastructure to extend services reach to multi-tenant buildings and to provide managed VPN service with the same ease of operations, security, and reliability of a dedicated solution. With the network expansion, ENMAX Envision implements a scalable solution capable of supporting thousands of end customers per metro area.
"As the operating environment changes, utility and energy services companies increasingly need to differentiate themselves through new service offerings," adds Pagani. "Nortel Networks Optical Ethernet solutions allow customers such as ENMAX Envision to offer high-bandwidth connectivity, which in turn enable more advanced services like VPNs, firewalls and voice over IP that are very attractive to enterprises today."
Nortel provides a complete set of simple, scalable, and secure Optical Enterprise solutions to assist the utility sector in maximizing their networking investment by increasing bandwidth, improving network resiliency, and providing new service opportunities, say company representatives. By implementing these solutions, utilities can achieve reduced network complexity and improved total cost of ownership by converging multiple disparate networks over a common infrastructure. Additionally, they can leverage their assets to generate new revenue opportunities through the delivery of next-generation optical broadband services including Optical Ethernet and storage connectivity.