APRIL 3, 2007 -- Star Telephone, an independent operating company (IOC) based in southeastern North Carolina, has selected Ciena Corp.'s (search for Ciena) CN 4200 FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform for its core network infrastructure upgrade. Star is transitioning its legacy SONET network to a next-generation, service-enabled architecture to better support the delivery of high-bandwidth services, including metro Ethernet, wireless, high-speed data, and IPTV.
Star Telephone provides a variety of advanced telecommunications services to more than 19,000 business and residential customers throughout five counties in southeastern North Carolina. Experiencing bandwidth limitations in its existing OC-48 SONET network, Star needed a platform that could help it meet growing customer demand for a variety of high-bandwidth services and provide the flexibility to provision new services quickly and efficiently without interruption. Instead of installing new fiber in the ground or building a larger fiber ring, Star says it chose Ciena's CN 4200 (search for CN 4200) platform to facilitate a practical convergence strategy and achieve a cost-optimized network architecture.
"As we move to IPTV to better meet customer demand for new entertainment choices, we realize the importance of moving to a more robust and scalable network architecture," explains Lyman Horne, executive vice president and general manager of Star Telephone. "By converging multiple services onto a single platform, Ciena's CN 4200 and FlexSelect Architecture not only allow us to offer more value to our customers, but to do so in a way that protects our existing network investment while establishing a flexible path for future growth," he adds.
Equipped with the ITU's G.709 Optical Transport Network (search for OTN) technology, Ciena's CN 4200 enables Star to overlay its SONET ring with a CWDM system on existing lit fiber to carry two Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) circuits over the ring--with the capability to grow to 16 GbE circuits--to deliver more services faster. Now, Star says it can deliver multiple signals over each fiber run, giving it sufficient bandwidth to support bundles of services that are more attractive to its customers. Using the CN 4200's FlexiPort technology, which allows optical ports to be remotely reprogrammed and reconfigured to different service types, Star can migrate its business customers from TDM leased lines to more packet-friendly services such as Ethernet and Fibre Channel for LAN and storage extension applications, as well as upgrading its own inter-office network.Â
"This deployment further illustrates the growing need among telecommunications providers to deliver advanced service bundles to their customers," contends Mike Aquino, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Ciena. "As IOCs are continually challenged to respond to this demand with limited fiber resources, it is essential they choose a practical migration strategy that can expedite the process and generate a competitive edge. The CN 4200's multiple benefits--including the ability to add capacity to existing fiber while providing programmable service flexibility to meet demands today or in the future--make it the ideal solution to help customers like Star Telephone achieve a converged, cost-optimized network architecture," he says.
In addition, Ciena's Global Network Services (GNS) organization delivered mission-critical deployment services for Star Telephone. During the upgrade, Ciena's GNS deployment experts say they seamlessly integrated the CN 4200 into Star's network and performed a live traffic cut onto the new platform without interrupting service to the carrier or its customers.
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