Telia Carrier, Coriant conduct real-time fiber capacity provisioning, performance trial

SAN DIEGO—Telia Carrier completed a field trial with Coriant to measure real-time optical performance and dynamic provisioning of optical capacity for its business and wholesale customers.

By using these tools in its European network, the service provider can better respond to customer needs with a more detailed view into how network elements are behaving and how to anticipate and fulfill varying traffic needs.

Conducted last month on a live fiber route in Telia Carrier’s backbone network between Hamburg and Prague, the duo demonstrated how to enhance end-user service reliability and improve operational efficiencies using online service planning, in-service optical margin measurement, and real-time health check analytics.

During the trial, 200G wavelengths were provisioned on-demand based on the accurate and real-time (DSP-independent) visibility of residual margin and optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) on the 1,300-kilometer long haul transmission route.

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Leveraging Coriant Aware Technology and CloudWave Optics, the live field trial featured a demonstration of in-service optical margin measurement without the need for additional hardware equipment.

Mattias Fridström, chief evangelist for Telia Carrier, told FierceTelecom that by gaining more real-time information about its network it can automate the processes to provision and manage faults or customer bandwidth needs.

Telia (Telia)
Mattias Fridström

“We need to be more automated in the way we operate our network,” Fridström said. “Together with Coriant we have tested a new way of working in the network on a live piece of the European footprint where we measure the quality of the network in real time.”

Fridström added that “instead of spending hours manually calculating what would be the best path we can in real-time see what the best set up would be.”

Uwe Fischer, EVP of R&D and PLM, and CTO for Coriant, said that by having greater visibility into the optical network a carrier like Telia Carrier can have two benefits: extracting the maximum capabilities in the physical layer and driving automation.

"The issue is two-fold: automation is one and by precisely measuring the behavior of the network, we can squeeze more out of the network to generate new revenue,” Fischer said. “The solution can also can also conduct trend analysis so you can predict network behavior in the future which may also allow you to take service actions and make network upgrades.”

Preventative network maintenance

By providing Telia Carrier with more visibility into its network functions, the service provider will be able to get ahead of issues before a customer could see an impact.

Service providers that operate optical networks need to account for residual margin, which can be impacted by OSNR, linear impairments, and non-linear impairments.

Coriant said that these elements offer the most useful measure of received signal quality and enables operators to determine how much room there is for a signal to degrade without impacting error-free operation.

By assessing residual margin correctly, Telia and other carriers can enable higher throughput, policy-based margin assignments and preventive maintenance.

Coriant
Uwe Fischer

“We have planning tools that allow Telia Carrier to precisely predict network behavior,” Fischer said. “These planning tools can take data collected in the transponder and along the amplifier chain to correlate and process in a way that we can actually measure the actual behavior.”

Fischer added that the tools “can enlarge the vision to look at existing networks” as well as new network connections.

Driving network responsiveness

Besides being able to respond to potential issues, having access to more data about the optical network means that Telia Carrier can better respond to customer demands for bandwidth and new services.

As a result, the service provider could activate services more rapidly than it could with traditional approaches.

“We can turn up services much more quickly,” Fridström said. “Previously, we had to manually do a lot of calculations which took time, but with Coriant’s solution that’s quicker.”  

This will allow Telia Carrier to provide a better customer experience to accommodate customers’ rapidly changing network demands.

“These guys often don’t know what they need to do on Monday for Friday so we need greater flexibility,” Fridström said.

What’s interesting about testing Coriant’s management solution is that it can run across current and older generations of equipment it has in Europe.  

“This is going into the European network where we have Coriant deployed pretty much everywhere,” Fridström said. “The good thing is it goes into live equipment and is something we can use.”