New Zealand's Spark builds OTN 2 with Ciena

Spark has completed the first stage of its next generation Optical Transport Network (OTN 2) using equipment, software and services from Ciena.

The OTN 2 rollout is a two-year project, which has started in Auckland, and will expand towards Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch. Initially, the new OTN equipment will be an express overlay to the existing core network, then will eventually replace the existing OTN.

The network, which features ‘self healing’ capabilities to automatically restore services after things like natural disasters, is now live and operating at 800 Gbps. Spark’s previous links operated at 100 or 200 Gbps. The rollout includes Ciena’s 6500 flexible grid colorless, directionless and contentionless (CDC) photonic line system with advanced control plane capabilities, WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics, and Manage, Control and Plan domain controller with Liquid Spectrum analytics.

Campbell Fraser, Spark’s Technology Tribe Lead said that the roll out of OTN 2 will deliver increased resiliency enabling Spark to respond and restore service much faster after events such as the Kaikoura earthquakes.

“The ‘self-healing’ technology, which we believe is a first for New Zealand, will minimise the impact of network outages. These are caused by cuts in the fibre cable from earthquakes, floods, landslips, construction works or rodents damaging cables. Currently, restoring service is a manual process but the sharp growth in network traffic means manual restoration is becoming unmanageable. The optical restoration ‘self-healing’ technology allows the light signals that carry the data to automatically change their path after a fibre cut, so this is a big step forward. We expect to be able to restore services much more quickly so we can get customers back up and running.”

“A self-healing and resilient network that can automatically fine tune capacity and dynamically adapt to evolving user demands and unexpected fibre cuts or natural disasters is critical in today’s digital-first environment,” said Rick Seeto, Vice President and General Manager of Asia-Pacific and Japan, Ciena.