This migration, which involves distributing network intelligence to different equipment, was implemented successfully without any impact on Orange’s customers, after several months of preparation. During this time, the entire long-distance network ( over 18,000 km and 330 nodes), was simulated on platform.
Orange’s French, European and Asian networks - made up of Nokia 1830 PSS WDM*, which can transport up to 20 Tb/s on Long-Distance links - were all switched to software-managed operations, allowing the deployment of on-demand activation services and automatic recovery control via Artificial Intelligence technologies if there is an outage.
Working towards an on-demand transmission network
By taking full advantage of new virtualisation and automation technologies, Orange is reinforcing its network performance in the long-term. This achievement not only helps to respond to its customers’ growing bandwidth requirements, but it also offers them more flexible on-demand transmission network solutions.
Jean-Luc Vuillemin, Executive Vice President Orange International Networks Infrastructures & Services, explains: “This progress is a major step in the development of our transmission network, towards quicker and more flexible production of transmission links, automation and the creation of new added-value services for our customers. Orange continues to invest in ultra high-speed infrastructure development to support the development of new uses, such as multimedia content, social networks or the cloud, and to ensure the quality of transmissions whilst controlling costs.”
Sam Bucci, Nokia stated: “The Orange and Nokia teams pooled their skills to respond to growing capacity and time to market challenges. One of the key steps was migration of the existing network software to the control plane, a carefully prepared operation orchestrated by our European teams, with the support and supervision of Orange experts. Our teams continue to work towards greater network automation, which will soon allow Orange customers to access services on demand via a dedicated and secure web portal.”
*WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) is a technique used in optical communication which increases optical fibre speed by circulating several different wavelengths on the same fibre.