Australian telecom operator Telstra has selected Ericsson and Ciena to supply optical network equipment, packet-optical platforms and services.
The initiative will enable Telstra to be ready for Service Provider SDN and NFV with Ericsson. The main aims is to ensure a consistent satisfactory customer experience, despite the demands for high traffic across different parts of the transport network.
The agreement includes the supply of Ericsson optical transport equipment and services as well as Ciena packet-optical platforms.
David Robertson, director Transport and Routing, Engineering, Telstra said: “Agreement for the optical networks will provide us with the ability to dynamically move and shape transport capacity with the flexibility and scalability to streamline our network operations.”
Telstra believes that optical technology will increase bandwidth capacity and also lower latency which is of growing importance as more and more operations move to the cloud.
This agreement also supports the introduction of software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) functionality, which will form an essential path to deliver flexible and scalable control networks.
Hakan Eriksson, head of Ericsson Australia and New Zealand, said: “We have worked with Telstra over a number of years to pilot the latest cloud networking technologies incorporating SDN and NFV.”
