Telstra, the largest Australian telecommunication company, has announced the launch of a new rapid restoration service for one of its busiest subsea cable routes in Asia. The company has joined forces with Ericsson and Ciena to ensure that their customers stay continuously connected. The solution offers carriers and cloud service providers increased network visibility, flexibility and reliable data access.
Nadya Melic, Telstra’s head of Connectivity and Platforms, said the new service is now available on three of its intra-Asia routes, following the successful tests carried out in December 2018.
“The Asian region presents one of the most challenging environments for subsea cable systems. Busy and shallow shipping ports in Hong Kong and Singapore, high-levels of fishing activity and an ecosystem prone to natural disasters, all threaten to disrupt or damage underwater infrastructure,” said Melic.
The new rapid restoration service on the subsea network will be provided using the equipment from Ericsson with flexible programmable infrastructure technology, and Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme solution. As a result, the existing Telstra’s “Always On” service, that currently offers service restoration within eight hours, will be optimised to eliminate any interruptions in less than half an hour.
“Damage to a subsea cable can take weeks or even months to fix. But with our new continuous connection service, we are able to reroute customers impacted by potential damage to another subsea cable path on our three-path network in less than 30 minutes. Through Telstra’s large subsea cable footprint and Ciena’s innovative technology, we are able to help remove the pain of an extended outage from our customers, with almost seamless restoration of their services,” added Melic.
Emilio Romeo, Ericsson’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, said: “Through this innovative technology we are supporting Telstra to meet ever-increasing network demands and providing unprecedented levels of reliability, automation and intelligence. This solution gives Telstra increased capacity to adapt to network changes, ensuring customers receive the best possible service.”
Rick Seeto, Ciena’s vice-president and general manager of Asia Pacific and Japan, commented: “We are seeing a growing trend for more agile, resilient and adaptive networks that use flexible, instrumented photonics and advanced software control. These innovations allow network providers like Telstra to not only scale their network and boost capacity but also protect traffic and service delivery.”
