BT deploys Ciena DCI for major 5G and FTTP growth

Technologies and Products

To support the rapidly growing traffic demands of 5G and FTTP, BT will deploy Ciena’s  Waveserver™ stackable data centre interconnect (DCI) platform to massively increase the capacity connecting its data centres to the UK’s main Internet peering nodes.

According to Ciena, Waveserver will provide BT with rapid network scalability to support mobile data growth from 5G, and growing residential broadband traffic driven by FTTP – while also reducing cost-per-bit through greater efficiency.

BT’s has publicly stated plans to deploy 5G in 16 cities in 2019, coupled with forecasted residential broadband growth to remain at roughly 40% annually. This means that significant new capacity is required in all areas of the network, and particularly on the main core links carrying this traffic.

Waveserver is designed to enable operators to quickly, reliably, and more economically turn up larger and multiple low-latency connections to their data centres. It supports high-speed data transfer, virtual machine migration, disaster recovery and backup between data centres. Waveserver also provides rapid scalability and ease of deployment with up to 2.4T of capacity per stackable device to support surging bandwidth demands of web-scale data centres.

In pursuit of its network automation and orchestration goals, BT will also deploy Ciena’s new domain controller, the Blue PlanetÒ Manage, Control and Plan solution.

“We are launching 5G in 2019 across the busiest parts of 16 UK cities, and our FTTP footprint is growing on a daily basis,” noted Neil J. McRae, chief architect, BT. “We have to stay ahead of the massive traffic growth that this brings, and the Ciena DCI platform ensures we can do that – quickly, making maximum use of automation.”

“This deployment marks a significant step forward for UK telecoms. Today’s service providers are turning to tailor-made solutions that add capacity and programmability features with greater power and efficiency, enabling reduced cost per bit,” added Jamie Jefferies, vice president & general manager, EMEA, Ciena (pictured).

For more information, visit www.ciena.com