PTCL doubles fiber network transmission rate to 200G via Nokia

Jan. 28, 2020
The upgrades from 100 Gbps to 200 Gbps have taken place in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi to support the growing consumption of broadband services, says Nokia.

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd. (PTCL) has doubled the per-wavelength transmission rate on its fiber-optic network infrastructure to 200 Gbps with the help of Nokia. The upgrades from 100 Gbps to 200 Gbps have taken place in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi to support the growing consumption of broadband services, says Nokia.

In addition to adding the 200-Gbps transmission capability on PTCL’s 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) platforms, which represents the country’s first use of an 8-QAM transmission rate according to Nokia, the upgrade also adds software-defined network (SDN) capabilities to PTCL’s infrastructure. The use of flex-grid capabilities also sets up PTCL to deploy 300- or 400-Gbps technology in the future.

“Being consistently a top-class service provider involves continuously modernizing and upgrading the network as per the changing consumption patterns,” commented Saad Muzaffar Waraich, chief technology and information officer at PTCL. “In view of this, we have enhanced the existing capacity from [a] 100G optical network to 200G to take care of the growing traffic in these cities. Nokia’s technology and expertise helped us to deploy 100G and enhance customer experience, so its 200G technology is also the right choice for expanding network capacity.”

The use of the 1830 PSS provides both DWDM and ROADM capabilities, which enables path redundancy. Nokia also provided such turnkey services as network design, planning and optimization, project management of site acquisition, civil work construction, and network implementation.

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