China Telecom’s Long Optical Network Completed

China Telecom’s 15,000-kilometer high-speed transmission network, described as one of the world’s longest such networks, is now open for business.

The opening of the network marks the “most significant project China Telecom has built in recent years,” China Telecom said in a statement. Its spans 18 of China’s total 31 provinces and covers most of the country’s developed areas.

China Telecom’s new network provides it with the massive bandwidth and levels of network intelligence that it needs, as well as enabling China Telecom to drive to industry’s lowest cost per connected bit, officials said.

China Telecom made a deal last February with Nortel Networks worth $101 million to help in developing the project. “By cooperating closely, the companies were able to install, develop, test and certify the network within one year,” a Nortel statement said.

Nortel’s equipment in the network includes the OPTera Long Haul 1600 Optical Line System and the OPTera Connect DX optical switch.

The OPTera Long Haul 1600 operates on a 10 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) platform, and uses dense-wave division multiplexing (DWDM) to split light into as many as 160 channels to maximize capacity on each fiber. The use of DWDM enables up to 28 million simultaneous Internet connections on a single strand of fiber, and increases by 640 times the Internet’s backbone speed and capacity to carry data, video and voice services.

Nortel’s OPTera Connect DX optical switch, meantime, lets service providers and carriers increase network capacity, provide flexible services, improve connection and network management capabilities, and enhance network reliability. OPTera Connect DX supports DWDM applications capable of deploying 1,600 gigabits of bandwidth over a single, bi-directional optical fiber, which the company says enables quick, seamless delivery of global transport and end-to-end services solutions.

To date, Nortel said it has won more than 30 contracts in China for 10 gigabit and DWDM optical products that span more than 40,000 kilometers.

China Telecom is the country’s largest telecommunications operator with businesses covering fixed lines and various value-added Internet services.