Verizon's Trials with Nortel Show 100G Commercial-Quality Network Performance

Verizon (News - Alert) Communications, which offers broadband and other wireline and wireless services to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers in the United States, reportedly said its field trial of 100G optical transmission technology with Nortel (News - Alert) performed with better tolerance for signal distortion than the standard 10G wavelength.

 

Data was transported in northeastern Texas at a 92 gigabits per second rate – a major step for Verizon towards commercialization of 100G transmission, according to the company. Verizon is pursuing commercial deployment of 100G technology.

 

The field trial demonstrated twice the tolerance for signal distortion when compared with a standard 10G signal. “This latest trial further illustrates Verizon’s keen interest in viable 100G technologies,” said Mark Wegleitner, Verizon’s senior vice president of technology. “Each advance we make moves the Verizon network closer to commercial deployment of reliable higher-bandwidth speeds on the backbone to serve our customers’ needs – whether it’s voice, video or data.”

 

Nortel has played a key role in field trials. In this latest Nortel trial, Verizon transmitted 100G traffic without errors. This became possible when Verizon used an advanced signal-processing method and signal-correcting techniques embedded in Nortel’s technology.

 

Nortel technology has several advantages. Nortel Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 convergence platform equipped with 40G/100G Adaptive Optical Engine technology integrates signal-processing techniques to have sustained signal integrity despite significant polarization mode dispersion.

 

PMD, an impairment of optical fiber transmission, causes a signal to distort as it travels along the optical fiber. The signal distortion results in imperfections when the signal arrives at the receiver end and limits the amount of data transfer.

 

“As Verizon prepares to meet increasing demand for bandwidth-intensive services like multimedia conferencing and HD video, it faces a complex challenge of increasing network capacity while maintaining existing infrastructure,” said Philippe Morin, president of Metro Ethernet Networks for Nortel. “Nortel’s 40G/100G Adaptive Optical Engine allows Verizon to deploy higher-capacity transmission systems over any fiber in their existing network without extensive re-engineering. This capability already is commercialized in our 40G technology and will be a key differentiator for our 100G solution.”