Verizon Business Adopts Control Plane, Optical Mesh, ROADM Technologies

Verizon Business this year expects to make significant optical network upgrades, including adopting optical mesh technology, installing ROADMs and implementing control plane technology that will enable it to automatically provision the backbone in near real time.

The company plans to test the control plane this year and take it commercial in 2009, says Fred Briggs, executive vice president of operations and technology at Verizon Business. “What that does is literally gives us virtually real-time provisioning in the backbone which today can take days or weeks,” says Briggs, adding that Verizon Business will develop the control plane technology internally.

Fujitsu Network Communications and Tellabs will provide Verizon Business with the ROADM gear, which the company began installing this quarter to support high-bandwidth services in local markets, Briggs says.

Verizon Business has selected Ciena Corp. to provide the optical mesh part of its network. Briggs says Verizon Business, which traditionally has used SONET rings, continues to install optical mesh, which Briggs says is much higher performance and can route around dual failures. The company already has had success using the newer technology across the Atlantic and the Pacific, so is now bringing it to the United States, where it expects to have optical mesh technology live in 18 markets this year.

Of course, these initiatives are just part of the many optical activities under way at Verizon Business, which simultaneously is working with partners China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Korea Telecom and Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan) to activate and operate the Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) submarine cable system, which will initially be a 1.5 terabit link operating at 10gig wavelengths, but will grow to 5 terabits.

TPE is the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the U.S. and mainland China (as well as other points in the area including Hong Kong, India, Thailand and Vietnam) and is the first major undersea system to land on the U.S. West Coast (in this case, in Oregon) in more than seven years. “That’s actually the first new cable since the collapse of bubble,” says Briggs, who adds that the cable is now 60 percent complete and is expected to be in operation by the second half of July, in time for the Olympics.

Offering an update on other Verizon Business optical activities, Briggs adds that the company continues to deploy ultra long haul technology in its core network.

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