The Orange and Nokia trial was performed over a 914 km network between Paris and Biarritz
In a recent trial, Nokia and Orange used the Nokia PSE-Vs, the vendor’s fifth generation super coherent optics, to support end-to-end 400 Gbps services across the carrier’s network.
The trial was performed in real-world conditions and over a 914 km network between Paris and Biarritz. The fiber network consisted of 13 spans of Orange’s existing network, through multiple cascaded reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplers (ROADM), using 100-GHz WDM spectrum channels.
According to Orange, the results of the trial validated its plan to upgrade its long-haul backbone networks to support new high-bandwidth 400 Gbps services, and the ability to scale fiber capacity up to 600 Gbps.
“This represents an increase in spectral efficiency by 50% compared to prior technologies on its long-distance network,” the carrier said in a press release.
“With the booming market bandwidth requirement and need for scalability and flexibility, it is important that Orange continues to support an ever-greater network scale and new high-bandwidth services across our terrestrial and subsea global footprint,” commented Jean-Luc Vuillemin, vice president of International Networks and Services at Orange. “Validating super coherent optics with Nokia represents an important enabler for future-proof networks which will bring spectral efficiency and operational deployment flexibility to our customer solutions. Furthermore, this technology will allow for power savings by nearly 50%, which is key to our objective of developing greener networks for our customers.”
The pair are working together in other areas of the network, as well, and in March of this year, Orange implemented Nokia’s Self-Organizing Networks (SON) technology across all of its 5G markets, starting with France and Spain, allowing the carrier to automate its radio network configuration and optimization processes, as well as improve network performance and efficiency to support the increasing demands of 5G.
“As a long-term partner, Nokia was a natural choice to help us automate our mobile networks in different geographies,” said Arnaud Vamparys, senior vice president of radio networks and 5G at Orange.
