ACADEMIA

Allstream announced the deployment of Ciena's coherent optical technology in the operator's 100G-capable national broadband network. The augmented network ensures Allstream can provide heightened network resiliency and performance with its scalable, high-bandwidth national network.

Key Facts:

-- The enhanced national broadband network allows Allstream to deliver enhanced managed wavelength services to customers in high-capacity transaction environments such as data centers, financial institutions, and government services.

-- Leveraging Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform equipped with WaveLogic coherent optical processors, Allstream significantly increased its network capacity and resiliency throughout Canada--without adding significant cost and complexity to the network--to deliver bandwidth-intensive applications, such as IP-based collaboration tools, multimedia and social networking, advanced Internet services, remote data storage and videoconferencing.

-- Allstream is also utilizing leading-edge network management software solutions from Ciena to ensure optimal network performance.

-- A long-standing Ciena customer, Allstream is a designated Managed Service Provider (MSP) partner in Ciena's BizConnect global partner program.

Executive Quotes:

-- "Our customers are asking for higher speed wavelength services to facilitate data center connectivity, storage replication, cloud services and other bandwidth-intensive applications and services. By using Ciena's industry-leading coherent optical technology, we're able to cost-effectively provide the performance and resiliency our customers demand to ensure their critical applications have the scale and capacity needed for their day-to-day business activities. -- Mike Strople, Chief Technology Officer at MTS Allstream

-- "Demand for our high-capacity coherent DWDM solutions is growing exponentially as communications solutions providers around the globe seek to differentiate their application and service offerings to remain competitive. Allstream has built a reputation on its ability to deliver innovative business services that are reliable, cost-effective, and able to scale to meet customer needs, and our coherent optical technology ensures they are able to meet this demand with optimal performance." -- Chad Whalen, vice president and general manager, North America field organization at Ciena

Technology Leadership

-- The pioneer and market leader in coherent technology for optical transmission, Ciena offered the industry's first commercially-available systems -- with coherent 40G deployed since 2008 and coherent 100G since 2009 -- and has shipped in excess of 9,000 coherent 40G/100G line interfaces to approximately 100 customers across the globe with more than 9.0 million coherent kilometers deployed.

-- Ciena provides a unique approach to coherent networking, offering more flexible architectures in addition to improving network economics. With its WaveLogic coherent optical processors, Ciena is increasing capacity throughput in existing networks to 100G today, with developments in place for achieving higher spectral efficiencies with several successful demonstrations of Terabit wavelength transmission, and is the first vendor to offer coherent-enabled colorless ROADM solutions.

Supporting Resources

-- Application Note: Coherent Optical Processing for High-Capacity Networks

-- White Paper: Key Technology Enablers of 100 Gb/s in Carrier Networks

-- Video: Coherent Optical Processing