Ciena announced that Alaska Communications has upgraded its terrestrial and AKORN submarine networks using its solutions to improve Internet access and enable secure, reliable connectivity in Alaska.
The network upgrades are also designed to support demand for mobile broadband services, provide a cloud enablement platform for businesses and allow Alaska Communications to continue delivering unlimited Internet to residents. The additional network capacity will help customers such as hospitals and the education sector utilise critical applications and improve their services.
Alaska Communications serves businesses, schools, health care providers, state and local governments and other carriers via its terrestrial and subsea networks. The operator's AKORN undersea optical cable network links Alaska and Oregon and traverses a geographically-diverse secondary path to help reduce the potential for service disruption.
Ciena stated that the network upgrade will increase network capacity from the Lower 48 to Alaska four-fold leveraging its GeoMesh solution. Leveraging the traffic grooming and aggregation capabilities of the new scalable, OTN-switched Ciena network, Alaska Communications is able to more quickly turn up new services and deliver low-latency, high-capacity connectivity, and thereby provide an improved customer experience.
* In January, Anchorage-based Quintillion announced the deployment of Ciena's 8700 Packetwave Platform to support the first phase of its planned 15,000-km intercontinental subsea system that will connect Europe and Asia via the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic. Quintillion's Phase 1 network build in Alaska will connect Nome and Prudhoe Bay, with branches into four rural coastal communities: Barrow, Point Hope, Wainwright and Kotzebue.
* The company also stated it was building a new terrestrial fibre system between Prudhoe Bay and Fairbanks that will also provide a link between the continental U.S. and the Arctic.
* In March, Alaska Communications announced an agreement with Quintillion to provide corporations, government agencies, healthcare services and schools in northwest Alaska with access to high-speed broadband and managed IT services.
