Delivering terabit transmission services to Tasmania

It’s only five months since we announced at Mobile World Congress that we were partnering with Telstra to upgrade its nationwide transmission network. And now engineers from the Australian telco and Ericsson have reached a key program milestone by turning on terabit transmission capacity to the Australian state of Tasmania.

The national optical transmission upgrade is of critical importance to Telstra. Ericsson will expand Telstra’s long haul, metro and regional optical networks – the foundation for the operator’s fixed and mobile networks. The next generation packet optical solution, which is being delivered with Ciena, will provide extensive capacity, resiliency and scalability to deliver a consistent quality user experience for the ever-growing demand for video, fixed and mobile broadband and cloud-based services.

You may know Tasmania for its pristine environment and its production of excellent wine, cheese and seafood, which are exported around the world. It can now also be known as the first Australian state to benefit from the upgrade of the Telstra transmission network, receiving dual terabit links to Victoria. This will support Tasmania’s growing capacity demands for years to come.

The upgrade will increase Telstra’s network capacity across the Bass Strait from 400 gigabit to 1 terabit per second – the equivalent of 200,000 HD videos being streamed simultaneously on each of Telstra’s two subsea cables. Additionally, swapping out legacy equipment will provide a 40 percent power saving, which benefits both Telstra and the environment

A highly reliable network is needed to support Australian businesses as they shift to cloud-based data and IT services, and introduce machine learning and artificial intelligence to help business to solve the most complex challenges. It will provide the foundation for future critical Internet for Things (IoT) and 5G traffic. All traffic needs to go over the optical layer, so you need to get the fundamentals right.

Ericsson played an integral part in the end-to-end delivery of the Tasmanian project, through expedited material delivery, installation and commissioning of Ciena converged packet optical equipment across 33 sites in Victoria and Tasmania.

The rollout created diverse paths from the mainland and built a transmission ring around Tasmania delivering both capacity and enhanced resiliency. Additionally, the Control Plane integration into the national mesh network will further enhance resiliency and reduce service activation times.

Tasmania’s diverse agricultural sector can benefit greatly from the IoT and other advanced technologies, and the Telstra network will be there to support them.

Delivering of new services to Tasmania is just the beginning for this national optical upgrade.