Nokia announced it is providing optical upgrades to Gulf Bridge International, a cloud, connectivity and content enabler in the Middle East.

This solution will increase GBI’s international network capacity ahead of the FIFA Football World Cup in Qatar in November to enable high-speed connectivity between Doha, Qatar and Milan, Italy.

Nokia’s PSE-V coherent technology will allow GBI to provide important capacity upgrades to its existing subsea cables and terrestrial links spanning two seas and three countries to meet customer demand for additional bandwidth between the Middle East and Europe.

GBI will upgrade its Nokia 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) optical transport platforms with new network interface cards powered by the Photonic Service Engine V (PSE-V) digital signal processors. This will enable upgrade to wavelength connections from 50 Gbps to 200 Gbps over GBI’s existing end-to-end subsea cable and terrestrial links spanning thousands of km and will allow the introduction of 400 Gbps services in the future.

The solution maximizes the capacity of two existing subsea cable links by improving the optical spectrum efficiency through advanced techniques such as continuous baud rate adjustment. It also eliminates regeneration of the optical signal over two long-haul terrestrial links.

“We selected Nokia because its proven PSE technology will enable us to grow the capacity of our subsea cables and terrestrial networks efficiently and cost-effectively,” Gavin Rea, Chief Technical Officer at GBI, said.