28 APRIL 2009 -- Transport and aggregation technology provider Ekinops (search Lightwave for Ekinops) has contributed to the deployment of the Altitude Telecom high-capacity, regional optical network between Paris and northwestern France.
The phased project involved construction of a converged TDM and Ethernet 10G DWDM optical backbone using the Ekinops 360 platform.
Altitude Telecom is a full-service operator offering voice, data, and Internet services. As a result of its success with the new Altitude Telecom Data Center, the carrier was looking to increase the capacity of its network.
"We needed a robust and flexible technology for our core network and for interconnecting with other service providers," notes Bertrand Lebarbier, executive director of Altitude Telecom. "The Ekinops solution was selected for its flexibility, reliability, and its upgradeability. We also liked the small footprint and low power consumption. It will significantly reduce our opex."
The new infrastructure was deployed in several phases. In 2007, Ekinops implemented the first phase in less than a month, compared with the industry typical two-to-four-month implementation timeline.
"We are proud to work with a service provider as renowned as Altitude Telecom and to have won in 2008 the extension to this new converged network," says Didier Brédy, Ekinops chief executive officer. "Our optical transport solutions enable telecommunications carriers to seamlessly migrate their legacy networks toward a new generation of converged, flexible, multiprotocol, and 'green' DWDM networks."
Among the deployment challenges was Altitude Telecom's need for high bandwidth in a number of point-to-point links, most of which exceeded 150 km (about 95 mi). The Ekinops 360 enables optical links of several hundred kilometers without in-line amplification. It allowed for minimal upfront cost and lower ongoing cost due to the elimination of the inline amplification sites.
Ekinops says its DynaFEC (dynamic forward error correction) and DynaMux (dynamic multiplexing) technologies also allow for reduced initial cost. DynaFEC uses software techniques to eliminate errors and push longer distances rather than using more expensive optics to achieve the required distances. DynaMux allows for the multiplexing of any mix of service types over a single wavelength, reducing the required number of wavelengths in converged networks.
Altitude Telecom was also in need of equipment that took up minimal space and utilised minimal power in each of its network sites. Ekinops claims its 360 platform is amongst the lowest power consuming systems in the industry.
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