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Networks & Infrastructure
C5: Huawei Unveils “Unique” WDM/OTN Solution
Former BT CTO Backs Vendor’s Claims
by Ken Wieland
Chinese vendor Huawei has officially unveiled its WDM-based optical transport network and automatic switched optical network (OTN/ASON), which incorporates its OSN6800 and OSN3800 optical switches, at the C5 World Forum event.
Long-winded it may sound but Huawei reckons its optical proposition is now ready to steal a march on other vendors chasing carrier business, particular those operators with legacy SDH networks who are faced with the prospect of carrying an ever-increasing amount of ethernet traffic (which the SDH networks were never designed to do).
“What is unique about this is that we are the first to launch an ONT switch within a WDM system,” says Jeffrey Gao, senior vice president of Huawei’s network marketing department. “And it can all be centrally managed on an end-to-end basis from the access right up to the core of the network.”
As the solution can aggregate Ethernet traffic at sub-wavelength rates, Gao asserts that operators have can have far greater bandwidth efficiency than if they were tied in to offering one dedicated wavelength per customer.
Supporting Gao’s claims is Mick Reeve, former CTO at the BT Group and now telecom consultant.
“To my knowledge, nobody else has been a able to combine Ethernet traffic aggregation with an ONT switch,” he says. “Using ROADM [remote optical add-drop multiplexers, which allows wavelengths to be remotely configured from a central network operations center], this really is point and click [for bandwidth service provisioning].”
The upshot, says Huawei, is that operators’ opex and capex costs can be cut dramatically as wavelength switching and traffic management is done at the less expensive layer 2 level.
The Chinese vendor claims that by not switching at layer 3 (the IP layer) operators can achieve a remarkable 65 per cent in capex savings and an even more eye-catching 90 per cent in opex savings.
Huawei says that it has already successfully tried the system with China Netcom in the metro and regional networks of the Henan and Shanxi provinces. China Telecom has also trialled the solution in the Jiangsu province
“In the next few months, we will be able to announce some customers in Europe,” says Gao.
Existing optical network customers of Huawei include BT, KPN, Vodafone, Telefonica, Telecom Italia and Belgacom. “We’re also talking to Deutsche Telekom,” adds Gao.
During 2006, Huawei had contract sales of US$11 Billion, 65 per cent of which was generated from the international markets.
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