Telefonica tests joint ADVA, Juniper packet optical control plane

Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) is the latest service provider to start moving toward using control plane software in its network to automate service provisioning and restoration.

While its control plane effort will support other vendor equipment, the service provider recently conducted a trial using a combination of ADVA Optical (XETRA: ADV.DE) and Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) equipment, including the FSP 3000 and MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers.

For the trial it conducted in Germany, Telefonica used a combination of ROADM technology, RAYcontrol GMPLS control plane software and other multi-layer configuration element created in the IST project ONE.

The three companies worked with a number of European universities to enable multi-layer restoration and automated DWDM service provisioning between the IP/MPLS routers.

So what did Telefonica learn from this exercise?

It said was able to see two key benefits: 37 percent reduction in capex for IP/DWDM networks and extending mean time to repair by a factor of 20 while maintaining 99.999 percent availability. One of the biggest impacts of the trial was that it could activate new services in less than 50 seconds, a process that traditionally took hours.

"We now have the opportunity to activate new services in seconds; previously this could take hours," said Juan Fernandez-Palacios, Head of Core Network Evolution at Telefonica I+D--Global CTO Unit, in a release. "What's more, we're also able to verify the drastic reduction in OPEX and CAPEX that such a streamlined multi-layer setup will deliver in our network."

Telefonica is certainly not alone in its desire to incorporate control plane technology to create faster service provisioning times and increase network restoration. Verizon (NYSE: VZ), for instance, is going to incorporate similar technology into its metro networks.

For more:
- see the release

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