NEWS

Integra Telecom Selects Infinera to Build Long Haul Optical Network

TMCnet
November 28, 2006
Patrick Barnard

Integra Telecom, a CLEC providing voice, data and Internet communications to thousands of business and carrier customers in Arizona, California, Idaho, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah and Washington, has reportedly selected Infinera to build a new optical network in order to meet customer demand for high-speed data services.

Specifically, Portland-based Integra, one of the largest competitive carriers in the U.S., will be upgrading to Infinera’s Digital Optical Network to improve network reliability and scalability. With total capacity of 800 Gbps, the Infinera DTN is architected to combine high-capacity transport, fully reconfigurable switching and GMPLS service intelligence in a single platform.

Integra hopes that Infinera’s digital architecture and monolithic photonic integrated circuits will help the company improve its reputation for quality and dependability. With 100 Gbps of bandwidth on every line card, the network will enable Integra to deliver new wavelengths or new services in days rather than in weeks or months.

The new network is part of Integra’s ongoing strategy of improving the quality of the services it delivers - and “future-proofing” its network for the addition of new services. Earlier this year the company acquired Electric Lightwave LLC and interconnected Electric Lightwave’s 4,700 mile long-haul network to Integra’s robust metropolitan area fiber networks, which span more than 2,200 route-miles.

Dave Bennett, senior vice president of network engineering of Integra Telecom, said the Infinera solution will enable Integra to reduce its service provisioning time while at the same time endowing it with “greater capabilities to switch and groom traffic into 10 Gigabit/second wavelengths.”

“We believe that the Infinera solution’s advanced performance monitoring will allow us to enhance our response time and increase our network reliability,” Bennett said in a press release. “We found that the total cost of ownership for the Infinera solution was less than other optical transport competitors. The benefits of the Infinera solution include the cost of the actual equipment, together with operational benefits such as ease of installation, service provisioning and maintenance support services.”

Bennett added that the new network will also give Integra the flexibility to add future services based on customer demand.

The advantage of Infinera’s solution lies in the use of Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs), which are perhaps best described as “hybrid” electronic/photonic integrated circuits. Instead of using the electronic integrated circuits which are typically found in the components of most fiber optic communications networks, Infinera's network components use PICs based on monolithic integration on an indium phosphide substrate. They are reportedly the only large-scale PICs deployed in telecom networks today and the only ones integrating 50+ components on a chip.

In general, using light instead of electricity for connectivity allows for the deployment of a single platform which controls practically every component in the network. In addition, the use of PICs leads to more compact and higher performance components - and also presents the possibility of integration with electronic circuits to provide increased functionality.