Optical Networking... for cost-effectiveness

The volume and variety of customer traffic on TELUS' national fibre-optic backbone and regional distribution networks is increasing dramatically and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Fibre-optics with its tremendous bandwidth carrying capabilities can provide the bandwidths necessary to meet the requirements. However it is the electronic systems at the ends of the fibres that have the challenging task of harnessing the potential bandwidth capabilities of the fibre and multiplexing the variety of different services onto the fibre in a cost effective and flexible manner. The Optical Networking strategic technology thrust at TELUS is solving this challenge.

TELUS' nation wide Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical network is capable of satisfying TELUS' current and future cross-country bandwidth needs due to its capability to carry multiple (up to 160) 10 Gbps light signals, or wavelengths, on each fibre strand. And TELUS' national optical network has redundant meshed fiber routing to ensure continued high reliability in the event of accidental fiber cuts or node failure.

Also TELUS' national and regional optical networks are being designed for the transformation to "IP Everywhere", to support direct interconnect and carriage of IP and Ethernet, dynamic bandwidth reconfiguration, and the integration with IP functionality to assure overall service quality and reliability. All this while at the same time achieving network simplification and cost effectiveness.