Chinese telecom equipment vendor ZTE has launched what it claims is the industry’s first quantum encryption solution for Optical Transport Network (OTN) transport equipment.

ZTE’s new system exploits the quantum mechanical properties of photons to create an ‘unbreakable’ communications channel. The secure transmission capability and anti-decoding capability are far higher than any traditional information encryption methods. “This will elevate the telecommunication information security sector,” ZTE said in a statement.

Optical network equipment supplier Ekinops has unveiled a new, flexible-rate transponder/muxponder card which allows network operators to quickly and easily double their transport capacity.

The low-cost programmable line card uses an advanced digital signal processor (DSP) combined with Ekinops’ enhanced T-Chip (Transport-on-a-Chip) technology to support both DP-QPSK and 16QAM coherent modulation formats on the same card.

Data security is a growing concern in today’s web-scale world, where more and more applications reside in the cloud. Businesses need the assurance that their data is secure not only at rest but also in-flight. New regulations and legislation for data protection have made securing this in-flight data a higher priority, especially for organisations such as financial service firms, healthcare and government organisations.

Optical transport vendor Coriant is the latest company to offer a product aimed at data centre interconnect (DCI) networks with the Coriant Groove G30 DCI platform.

Offering 3.2Tb/s of capacity in a compact and stackable one rack-unit (1RU) box, the new product provides up to six times higher system density and 70 per cent lower power consumption than comparable products, the company claims.

These capabilities drive down operational costs while increasing capacity to help network operators deliver profitable DCI services and enhance the end user cloud experience.

Metro optical systems company Sorrento Networks International has launched a compact 100G optical transport product for enterprise and data centre markets at Broadband World Forum in London.

The ultra-compact GigaMux 3300 system is the latest addition to Sorrento’s GigaMux portfolio of products, and the first new product to be launched since the company was reborn earlier this year (see Sorrento restarts its metro optical business).

In response to feedback from its customers, optical transport vendor ADVA Optical Networking has added new client rates, multiplexing and amplification capabilities to its FSP 3000 CloudConnect platform.

The company's flagship data centre interconnect (DCI) technology can now support 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s client rates in addition to 100Gb/s. This mix of client rates ensures that customers can effectively scale their DCI networks as their business demands. Also available are a range of new channel multiplexers, including a high-density 48-channel multiplexer on a single line card.

All-optical switch specialist Polatis has announced general availability of its new 48-fiber Series 6000 optical switching module (OSM).

The 48xCC OSM is a fully non-blocking, single sided all-optical 48-fiber matrix switch that is designed for ‘any-to-any’ port connectivity, enabling programmable interconnection architectures not possible with traditional symmetric NxN switch matrices.

The module has been designed specifically for OEM integration with network equipment, fibre management systems and test and measurement tools.

The web-scale effect isn’t confined to metro networks – it is driving network providers to invest heavily in interconnecting data centres across long distances as well as in cities, says Ciena.

The vendor has responded to that need with plans to enhance the capabilities of its Waveserver data centre interconnect (DCI) platform with an expanded set of reach and capacity options.

Stepping away from traditional chassis-based designs, Fujitsu has launched a new optical platform based on functional disaggregation. The new 1FINITY platform, which will be available globally, will enable service providers to take advantage of flexibility and modularity in the hardware domain, complementing the flexibility and modularity that has been developed in software with software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV).

ZTE has released the ZXMP M721 CX66, a compact packet Optical Transport Network (OTN) platform at the WDM & Next-Generation Optical Networking Forum held in Nice, France.

With the global large-scale commercial deployment of LTE and the rapid development of over-the-top (OTT) services, the demand for flatter networks is forcing OTN-bearer networks to evolve into unified bearing networks. With this in mind, ZTE has developed its compact packet OTN platform product, the ZXMP M721 CX66, which integrates ODUk, packet, and virtual circuit (VC) crossing.