ER-Telecom, one of the three largest Internet and pay TV providers in Russia, has deployed Ekinops’ 360 optical system to provide 100G DWDM wavelengths over its nationwide network.
Stretching over a distance of more than 5,000km, ER-Telecom’s network serves 56 cities across eastern and southern Russia. The operator turned to Ekinops when it needed to meet growing traffic demands from its customers. Construction of its own DWDM network would have been too costly, so instead ER-Telecom is simply leasing wavelengths on existing third-party networks and then using Ekinops’ equipment to transport 100G wavelengths over those networks. This innovative approach allows ER-Telecom to increase capacity extremely quickly at a fraction of the cost of building a new network.
ER-Telecom performed extensive testing of the 100G infrastructure, from Moscow in the west to Tumen in the east. «This turned out to be the perfect solution for us,» said Kirill Pischalnikov, who heads network development and maintenance for ER-Telecom. «We were able to complete deployment in less than two weeks, and the equipment has been working very dependably.»
«Many service providers are reluctant when it comes to an alien wavelength solution,» said Francois Xavier Ollivier, CTO of Ekinops. «Because of the difficulties inherent in this application, they worry about manageability and interoperability of the new wavelengths with existing channels.
He continued: «Ekinops has deployed alien waves for customers for over eight years and has a lot of experience doing that, over equipment from every DWDM manufacturer. We demonstrated to ER-Telecom our techniques for solving the technical and operational issues. With our expertise we can assure operators that they can trust Ekinops for a smooth, trouble-free operation of alien waves in their network.»
The Ekinops 360 system offers alien wavelength support through a variety of small, compact devices. These include a 1RU device that supports both a 10×10 muxponder and a 100G transponder in one product as well as 2RU and 7RU chassis that also support many additional applications – such as WDM, DWDM, FOADM, and ROADM – and services, such as SONET/SDH, Ethernet, SAN, video, and OTN.
