BT makes plans for continued traffic growth in its core
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 6:17PM Briefing: DWDM developments
Part 1
Kevin Smith: “A lot of the work we are doing with the trials have demonstrated we can scale our networks gracefully rather than there being a brick wall of a problem.”
BT is confident that its core network will accommodate the expected IP traffic growth over the next decade. Traffic in BT’s core is growing at between 35 and 40 percent annually, compared to the global average growth rate of 20 to 30 percent. BT attributes its higher growth to the rollout of fibre-based broadband across the UK.
The telco is deploying 100-gigabit wavelengths in high-traffic areas of its network. “These are key sites where we're running out of wavelengths such that we need to implement higher-speed ones,” says Kevin Smith, research leader for BT’s transport networks. The operator is now trialling 200-gigabit wavelengths using polarisation multiplexing, 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (PM-16QAM).
