As service providers globally seek to streamline their infrastructure, they’re increasingly relying on Routed Optical Networking solutions to boost efficiency, reduce costs, accelerate the rollout of new services, and scale capabilities to meet surging customer demand. This innovative solution revolutionizes network economics, slashing total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 45% while significantly streamlining operational complexity. I conversed with Marc-André Gilbert, Bell Canada’s Senior Supervisor of Transport Planning, to explore their community transformation initiative leveraging Routed Optical Networking, which is poised to enable Bell Canada to become Canada’s top-performing carrier while significantly reducing costs.
As a vital cornerstone of Canada’s excellence, it is our paramount imperative to deliver unparalleled services and expertise that consistently exceed client expectations. Despite the presence of a legacy infrastructure, the task at hand proves to be more complex than initially anticipated. To revitalize our community, we must transform it into a cutting-edge, eco-friendly hub that fosters innovation and resilience, allowing us to deliver unique services and navigate industry-wide headwinds such as declining margins and Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). Our company has evolved into a truly sustainable enterprise, boasting a remarkable 5% annual dividend growth over the past 16 years. With the transformative power of Routed Optical Networking, we’re poised to further fortify our financial health and create even greater value for our stakeholders. Accordingly, our analysis indicates a projected savings of approximately $125 million CAD over the next decade, accompanied by a 27% reduction in capital expenditures. The capital expenditures’ (CapEx) financial savings are anticipated to more than double by leveraging Routed Optical Networking solutions on dark fiber infrastructure.
As our residential and enterprise clients’ bandwidth demands continue to escalate, emerging applications like the Internet of Things (IoT) create a pressing need for low-latency connectivity solutions that can keep pace with their evolving requirements. With routed optical networking, we can achieve greater flexibility in meeting these demands by deploying a more scalable infrastructure that enables the cost-effective delivery of new fixed and wireless services. By replacing cumbersome, energy-intensive transceivers with compact, plug-and-play optics and integrating IP and optical layers, we can dramatically alter the cost structure of networking, enabling speeds of up to 400G and surpassing competitors significantly earlier?
It has been approximately 150 years since Alexander Graham Bell secured a patent for the first practical telephone in 1876. Built upon the enduring legacy of Bell Canada, Routed Optical Networking seeks to reimagine the fundamental pillars of our organization. But it’s not about innovating just to innovate; there has to be a purpose. Constructing upon that legacy of innovation to ensure our organization remains poised for long-term success.
As Routed Optical Networking seeks to converge IP and optical technologies, a straightforward approach was unlikely, necessitating careful consideration and coordination with both IP and optical teams to secure their support. While their mandates diverge significantly, a shared imperative binds them: delivering the best possible outcomes for our clients and driving success for our organization. We compared the capabilities of various routers and contrasted them with our current deployments in the optical domain. The disparity in capability was substantial – terabits compared to megabits. We subsequently explored ZR’s pluggable coherent optics, which offered the potential for 400G throughput as a viable alternative to dedicated line cards or transceivers, while also providing built-in performance, cost-effectiveness, and reduced energy consumption through its optical transceiver module. Despite initial concerns about convergence potentially causing routing issues, our lab experiments with the Cisco team revealed compelling benefits from adopting Routed Optical Networking solutions. In reality, each group serves as the most vital champions for this initiative.
We will progressively implement Routed Optical Networking across our entire network infrastructure over the course of three years, commencing with a pilot program focused on next-generation edge site deployments in the current year. As we build the network segment by segment on top of existing legacy infrastructure, the introduction of routed optical networking significantly simplifies its operational management. In order to gain a better understanding of our operational landscape, it’s essential to consider that previously, we employed distinct roles such as IP planners, transport planners, and entry planners to oversee deployments within specific disciplines, alongside various other community-based operational hubs. Consider the daunting task of orchestrating a network outage, involving intricate webs of primary and secondary fiber paths, satellite transponders, and frequency bands, spanning thousands of kilometers with numerous aggregation nodes to consider. During instances of fiber outages, identifying the specific fiber line or network impacted was once a laborious and time-consuming process. As network disruptions are swiftly addressed through Routed Optical Networking, our teams can rapidly diagnose issues, quickly replace any compromised optics, and meanwhile redirect traffic along alternative routes to minimize the impact on end-users’ experience?
Completely! By implementing this initiative, we anticipate a remarkable 76% reduction in both area and energy consumption within our community. With simplicity, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and environmental responsibility at its core, Routed Optical Networking has the potential to bring about a profound positive impact on our organization. I’d encourage my peers across various cloud service providers to rethink their infrastructure and consider adopting a similar approach as well. Develop a compelling business case in collaboration with technical teams and senior leadership to drive forward this initiative. It’s going to repay.
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