Vodacom said on Monday that, working with telecommunications equipment supplier Nokia, it has been able to achieve the “highest transmission rates across a live optical network in Africa”.
The field trial is aimed at “transforming” Vodacom’s national fibre-optic network infrastructure while reducing operating expenses, the operator said.
Using a chipset from Nokia called Photonic Service Engine 3 (PSE-3), the companies were able to transfer data on different light frequencies through fibre-optic cables.It will ensure that the optical network is ready for the higher peak network speeds that will result from the expansion of 5G services
“The deployment of a Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Switch will assist Vodacom South Africa in maintaining high-quality data services across the country, to both address the ongoing surge in data traffic during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond,” Vodacom said.
“It will also ensure that the optical network is ready for the higher peak network speeds that will result from the expansion of 5G services. The nationwide optical network will connect all major South African cities, large data centres and network hubs.”
1 600km
The live network trial successfully established a 500Gbit/s link between data centres in Midrand in Johannesburg, and a 300Gbit/s link between Cape Town and Midrand. “This was achieved without any electrical regeneration on a route that spans 1 600km.”
For more technical readers, the products and services used in the trial are:
- Nokia’s PSE-3, powered by “probabilistic constellation shaping” (PCS), a concept pioneered by Nokia Bell Labs that allows for the extraction of as much capacity as possible over an optical channel. It enables the maximisation of performance and capacity of every link in the optical network.
- Nokia’s wavelength routing technology — this is powered by a “colourless, directionless, contentionless with FlexGrid” (CDC-F) optical-switch architecture. It is a “high-performance, non-blocking optical switch architecture” designed for maximum performance.
- Nokia’s high-capacity “muxponder” (S4X400, which can be “seamlessly deployed on Vodacom’s network for high-performance applications over metro, regional and long-haul optical networks”.
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