MobiFone taps Ciena for packet-optical network

MobiFone
MobiFone has revealed that it will be using the Ciena technology in Vietnam to build its converged packet-optical network, which has a 300Gbps provision spanning 1,400 kilometers across the country from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City.

The company can offer high-speed mobile broadband services to businesses and consumers in more than 25 local provinces with this technology.

The company with 50 million subscribers amounting to about 30 percent of market share is the second largest mobile operator in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese government company operates under the Ministry of Information and Communications, but has been up for privatization since a year.

“Ciena’s optical platforms enable us to have a state-of-art backbone system. Demand for high-speed fixed and mobile data services, video content and the move to the cloud mean that network services in Vietnam have never been more important,” said Le Nam Tra, chairman, MobiFone Corporation.

Currently companies like Telstra are in early stage discussions to purchase a stake in Mobifone. Telstra has been looking to make investments in Asia with plans to invest up to $1.3 billion for a 40 percent stake in the Philippines business.

“With Ciena’s converged packet-optical and control plane software platforms, MobiFone can deliver resilient, on-demand services as bandwidth demand continues to increase in Vietnam, driven by the aggregation of network traffic for mobile, data, voice, video and cable TV services,” said Anthony McLachlan, vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific, Ciena.

The 6500 Packet-Optical Platform equipped with WaveLogic 3 coherent technology and hybrid packet OTN switching will aid MobiFone  to easily scale and automatically adapt network capabilities to meet traffic demand.

Also, intelligent control plane technology of Ciena will be used to ensure survivability even in the case of multiple fiber cuts, helping MobiFone ensure always-on connectivity to its end users.

Greater visibility and end-to-end control across its network to respond dynamically to changing traffic demands using Ciena’s network management platform will be an added benefit. ELCOM, a Ciena BizConnect channel partner, will provide deployment services for this project.