PT established the first 100Gbps connection in Portugal
Monday, November 29, 2010
For the first time in Portugal, PT, in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent, established a 100 Gbps connection between the cities of Lisbon and Porto.
This is the fastest possible transmission speed currently in a fully working telecommunications network, as is the case of PT’s fibre network. Download of 100,000 mp3 files in 60 seconds, streaming of 15,000 HDTV channels simultaneously or transfer 200 million text messages in 2.9 seconds are but a few possible examples with 100 Gbps.
The demonstration was based on IP connectivity at 100 Gbps end-to-end, including switching, IP/MPLS routing and optic transmission equipment between both cities (which are circa 427 km away) over an optic DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) connection, which is in service. This was a demonstration that proves this type of speeds is possible on existing fibre optic networks.
According to José Franco, from the Planning an Implementation of PT’s Transport Network Department, “what we did was to put both technologies together – DWDM transmission and IP/MPLS – an inject traffic with 10Gbps thresholds up to 100Gbps. We demonstrated that our network is ready to support the introduction of 100Gbps, in a smooth way without interruptions, that the installed technology supports this speed and the compatibility of 100Gbps in terms of DWDM transmission and IP/MPLS.” To carry out this demonstration, PT used Alcatel-Lucent 1626 Light Manager and Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router for 100Gbps with IP/MPLS.
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Alfredo Baptista, CTO, Portugal
Telecoms, highlighted Portugal
Telecom’s enormous
internal engineering capacity |
José Franco, from PT’s Planning
& Implementation of the
Transport Network Dept.,
explained the potential of capacity
reinforcement of the PT network | What are the consequences of this capacity increase for PT? According to José Franco, “apart from a wider bandwidth, 10 times wider than the current bandwidth, we expect to have significant gains in terms of space and consumption reduction.” This means “PT’s concerns with environmental sustainability are also reflected here. These devices will afford a smaller ecological footprint, so we shall have a lot more capacity in the same space, with a lot less consumption, at least 50% per gigabit transported”, vis-à-vis the current situation, he highlights. This connection also represents an enormous potential in terms of services, by providing network capacities that enable new cloud services through the existing triple-play network and allow meeting the growing demand of bandwidth for transportation of video and multimedia signals with unmatched quality in the user experience in the three types of display: television, PC and mobile devices.
Alfredo Baptista, CTO of PT, congratulated PT’s engineering team and explained that this is a big investment in terms of services performance. “Following industry trends, we expect that video constitutes more than half of the traffic of our users. This type of demand needs higher speeds and technology to support increased capacity”, he adds. “This fully integrated IP/optic 100Gbps connection, together with the announced evolution of our access fibre network using GPON and 10GGPON technology is yet another step towards net generation networks with full IP end-to-end connectivity, offering high levels of quality of service and high speeds, being these characteristics unique and non-replicable in other type of technologies.”
 | It is worth recollecting that PT has circa one million houses passed with fibre optic in Portugal and recently reaffirmed its commitment to invest in the implementation of FTTH to cover additional 600,000 houses. These 600,000 new houses passed with fibre will mean using circa 300,000 km of fibre – equivalent to 7.5 rounds of the world – involving circa 1,500 people, including PT employees and external suppliers.
The demonstration took place at PT’s Picoas building in Lisbon, being present several managers from PT’s network areas, namely from the Departments of Platforms and Services Engineering, Operations and Maintenance of the Wireline Network, Information Services and Technologies, Network Planning and Implementation, Specialized Customer Services, among others.
Representatives from Alcatel-Lucent were also present, namely António Beato Teixeira, chairman of Alcatel-Lucent in Portugal, for whom “the evolution of operator networks to 100G will be a trend and business area during the next few years and these speeds will be the standards of the future IP and optic networks. This demonstration discloses past investments made by PT, proving that its current IP and optic infrastructure is compatible with 100G technology”, he adds.
With this presentation, PT demonstrated its strong commitment to new technologies and constant search for the improvement of quality of service and of customers’ usage experience. It also proves that its network is adapted and ready to receive this evolution.
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