Arelion and Infinera yesterday announced that Arelion has seamlessly upgraded its existing Infinera FlexILS flexible-grid line system to support the L-band on a high-traffic route from Ashburn, VA to Atlanta. This upgrade doubles capacity per fiber pair, marking Arelion’s first route with active L-band capacity in service. Arelion can now bring more capacity to market on a continent where long-distance fiber is in short supply in many regions, helping Arelion continue to meet the capacity requirements of its service provider, content provider, and enterprise customers.
Arelion has seen substantial demand from customers for terabit-scale bandwidth between the booming tech hubs of Ashburn and Atlanta. This L-band deployment showcases Arelion’s continuous innovation to improve the quality and efficiency of its existing network to the cost benefit of its customers. Additional L-band deployments on high-traffic routes in North America are planned for later this year.
Infinera FlexILS is the industry’s most widely deployed flexible grid-compliant open optical line system, featuring C+L-band support and colorless-directionless-contentionless ROADM. This innovation in open networking allows carriers to eliminate vendor lock-in, manage supply chain variations, and easily manage native and alien wavelengths through granular control. The system enhances flexibility by supporting programmable configuration that optimizes operation based on performance, spectral efficiency, long span reach, and fiber conditions. Infinera FlexILS seamlessly doubles fiber capacity through L-band expansion from the adjacent C-band without impacting service or operational quality.
This new capability provides Arelion’s customers with enhanced scalability and fast delivery for its No.1 ranked internet backbone, AS1299, as well as the global carrier’s portfolio of leading IP and optical technology services, including high-speed Wavelengths, IP Transit, Cloud Connect, and Ethernet services for service providers, content providers, and enterprises.
Georgios Tologlou, Senior Network Architect, Arelion
We’re seeing significant demand for additional capacity from our customers along this high-traffic route as these tech hubs grow rapidly. This innovation is a strong business case for us to optimize the cost per bit and minimize operational expenditures. Leveraging L-band, we can maximize the capacity per fiber pair to quickly serve our customers’ demands and supercharge our sales growth on one of the most popular routes in our North American network.
Ron Johnson, Infinera’s General Manager, Optical Systems and Network Solutions Group
Our platforms are purpose-built to enable seamless upgrades to provide the greatest amount of investment protection and enable our customers to meet relentlessly growing bandwidth demand. Expanding the network to support L-band doubles the spectrum that can be used to transmit optical signals, hence enabling Arelion to double the amount of services they can provide per fiber while simultaneously achieving simplification of their network through automation and flexible operation.
