Tampnet upgrades North Sea submarine network

Tampnet, which provides fiber-optic network services to a variety of customers in Northern Europe, including oil and gas platforms in the North Sea, is upgrading its submarine network and terrestrial network with the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform from Ciena (NYSE: CIEN).

The company is positioning its undersea cable network as the shortest across the North Sea. It is also the largest, based on 2,500 km of subsea fiber-optic cable. The multi-terabit network offers service providers and multinational organizations low-latency, high-capacity connectivity for financial trading and to support connectivity between office locations and data centers. The submarine cable network expansion also will create an alternative gateway between points of presence in London, Leeds, and Aberdeen in the UK to Oslo, Kristiansand, Stavanger, and Bergen in Norway, as well as Stockholm, Sweden, Ciena says.

Lambda Networks, a Ciena BizConnect partner, has coordinated the design and delivery of Tampnet's network upgrade.

"Increases in mobile data, cloud-based applications, and data center interconnections are causing significant data traffic growth in Europe. With Ciena supporting our network upgrade we can increase capacity to accommodate these demands and simplify connectivity with a direct link that removes many administrative, operational, and political challenges associated with other European data transit routes," said Arnt Erling Skavdal, CTO at Tampnet.

"As one of the only providers able to facilitate high-capacity services from the UK to Scandinavia, Tampnet is in a unique position to provide a direct, ultra-low-latency route," added Keri Gilder, vice president and general manager, EMEA, at Ciena. "Now with flexible and competitive optical connectivity it can also can ensure faster service turn-up, diversity, and boost performance. Critically, this network enables Tampnet to venture into new markets to discover new and unique opportunities."

For related articles, visit the Network Design Topic Center.

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.