Cable group Liberty Global has turned to Transmode, a supplier of packet-optical networking hardware, for 100G metro deployments across Europe to support increased network traffic.
The international cable company, which has operations in 12 countries in Europe, will be using Transmode's TM-Series platform to upgrade its metro and regional networks to 100G. The roll out has already begun in “several countries” according to the vendor.
The announcement is significant because it represents the beginning of larger-scale roll outs of metro 100G. “Obviously it is small scale today, metro 100G is really quite new, but this is the beginning of the transition to metro 100G,” said Jon Baldry, technical marketing director with Transmode.
He says Transmode has deployed its metro 100G product before, but only in smaller projects. The deployment with Liberty Global, although starting small, could become extensive as 100G takes off in the metro. Market analyst firm Infonetics Research estimates that 40 per cent of all metro WDM deployments will be 100G in 2017.
“So far it’s been deployed in multiple countries already and, as and when Liberty Global need to expand their 100G in metro networks, we will be there to support them,” he said.” They will deploy, starting now and continuing until the next transition to, well whatever comes along after 100G.”
Transmode says the fact that it can name Liberty Global as a customer is also significant. “They are a long-standing customer of ours, but they don’t normally support vendor press releases like this. This is the first time we’ve actually announced them,” noted Baldry.
Liberty Global is the world's largest international cable company with operations across Europe and is currently enjoying great success with high-speed residential and business services. This in turn is driving considerable network traffic growth. Liberty Global's consumer brands include Virgin Media, UPC, Ziggo, Unitymedia, Kabel BW, Telenet and VTR.
The initial 100G deployments started in Q4 2014 and have continued in Q1 2015 with further deployments planned.
Liberty Global says it chose Transmode's pluggable-optics-based metro 100G product, not only because it was the most economical solution for high-speed connectivity, but also because it also used the existing rack space and enables low power usage.
Jan Lindgren, Liberty Global's VP network engineering, explained: “The metro 100G solution from Transmode has been simple to deploy and easy to use by our engineers in both metro and regional deployments. We are now able to achieve the high-speed connectivity and the flexibility we needed for our internal capacity. Transmode is a trusted supplier, and has proven to be reliable in the markets we have deployed its technology.”
He continued: “The metro 100G solution has been deployed in our existing racks with a small footprint and has kept power usage to a minimum. While we continue to securely move critical traffic in high density areas, we have taken this next step to metro 100G to ensure we are able to support the ever-growing service bandwidth demands from our customers.”
Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Transmode is currently the subject of an acquisition offer by Infinera (see Infinera accelerates metro strategy with $350M Transmode bid).