Bharti Airtel today announced that it's deploying coherent optical and intelligent software platforms of Ciena to provide enhanced services to the customers. Airtel says that it's building the world's largest Photonic Control Plane networks in India. With this deployment, Airtel's backbone network will serve the aggressive demand for high-speed data services in India. After the entry of Reliance Jio to the Indian marker, the data consumption has seen a meteoric rise. In fact, India is leading the chart globally when it comes to data consumption. As the prices of tariff plans coming down drastically, more and more people are starting to use the mobile data in the country. And to serve the consumers needs, Airtel is actively deploying new technologies.
Airtel to Enhance Super Fast Data Speeds on 4G/5G/FTTH Architectures
As noted, with this deployment, Airtel consumers will experience faster data speeds on 4G/5G/FTTH architectures. Furthermore, Airtel stated that the new backbone architecture creates a solid foundation that can cut across technology generations to seamlessly work with data rates of 400Gbps and higher. Having said that, Airtel is building a future-proof network with this deployment in India.
In addition, the architecture offers lower latency and software-controlled connectivity for Cloud infrastructure, faster transformation to virtualised platforms, and 5G readiness - essential to a world of connected devices and things.
Bharti Airtel deployed the new technologies as part of the company's Project Leap which is the network transformation programme.
Randeep Sekhon, CTO – Bharti Airtel said: “Airtel has always pioneered the introduction of cutting-edge network technologies to serve its customers. We are pleased to work with Ciena to build one of the world’s largest optical spine and leaf networks, which is also a big step towards 5G readiness by leveraging our huge fibre assets. This will not only scale our network for massive capacity but also protect traffic and enhance service delivery to all our customers. It will also help Airtel further strengthen its position as a key enabler of digital experiences in an increasingly connected world.”
Airtel to Offer Faster 4G Services Going Forward
The only issue faced by Indian telcos right now is the fluctuating data speeds on their networks. And Airtel is looking to solve the same with this new deployment. "Photonics combined with advanced software intelligence enables a smart and agile network that allows for simplified provisioning of end-to-end network wavelengths, speed and capability to handle multiple fibre failures thereby providing users uninterrupted ultra-high capacity service," said the company in a press statement.
The network will also support bandwidth on demand, optical VPNs, latency based routing and dynamic data centre interconnect, which will provide a unique value proposition for Airtel’s retail and enterprise customers, further added the company.
Airtel will leverage Ciena’s 6500 Packet Optical platform powered by WaveLogic Ai coherent optics to provide a highly scalable, programmable infrastructure. Software control of Bharti’s network operations is greatly automated with Ciena’s Blue PlanetO Manage, Control and Plan domain controller, which expedites alarm and fault management, service provisioning, node backup and restoration.
Additionally, with Ciena’s Liquid Spectrum analytics capability, the network can monitor, predict and address connectivity and capacity challenges as they occur. This essentially will help Airtel to solve the network issues at a faster rate.
