Cover Story DWDM Makes a Difference at TIME


For TIME dotCom, the Ds in DWDM stand for “difference.” TIME is a competitive carrier with a fiber optic network that covers a large portion of Malaysia and features 5 redundant routes totaling 6,000 kilometers. Until recently, TIME served its wholesale and business customers using SDH, but that technology did not provide the efficiencies the company wanted for its customers. All of that has changed since the company deployed a DWDM network based on the Tellabs®


7100 Optical


Transport System (OTS). The new network enables TIME to offer strongly differentiated, high-bandwidth services backed by SLAs. It is supported by a unique mesh protection scheme that provides sophisticated reroute capability to help ensure service even in the event of multiple fiber cuts. After just a few months of operation,


the new network already has helped TIME win new wholesale business from one major wireless carrier and attract significant interest from several others. In addition, the new network capabilities have generated strong interest on the part of key enterprises, including several in the financial industry.


Capacity and Confidence TIME decided to make the move to DWDM because as Azman Imen, head of network roll-out, project management, for TIME, explained, “Our concentration is in the wholesale market, and we needed to have a very effective network that could provide 99.999% reliability.” Capacity was another motivation. “SDH networks are


subject to congestion, and wholesale customers now want more bandwidth,” said Hairun Nizam Hashim, transmission and service management engineer for TIME.


Winning Wireless


Although the new DWDM network has been operational only since December 2009, TIME has won wholesale backhaul business from a major wireless carrier that the company had been trying to land. “What we offered earlier was based on SDH, and they weren’t very


keen,” said Azman Imen, head of project management for TIME. “But once we offered DWDM, we got the business.” That wireless carrier, along with others, are impressed by the


bandwidth and capacity TIME now can provide. With 88 wavelengths per fiber, capacity is virtually unlimited, and the 99.999% reliability that TIME can provide using its 5 fiber routes and Tellabs’ GMPLS- based mesh protection scheme was also an important differentiator. “The wireless operators demand bigger bandwidth and the


protection,” Azman said. And measured on a per-bit basis, the DWDM-based offering is less expensive than SDH-based alternatives.


TELLABS INSIGHT Q3 9


TIME is proud of its network and confident that it is ready for any eventuality.


The maximum connection speed that the SDH network


could support was 10 Gb/s. The new network can support as many as 88 wavelengths per fiber, with each wavelength providing 10 Gb/s connectivity. And in the future, the system can be easily upgraded to support 40 Gb/s or even higher data rates per wavelength. Tellabs was 1 of 6 manufacturers that competed for the


“We had a tight deadline,” Azman said, and of the vendors participating in the proof of concept, “Tellabs was able to keep to this.”


TIME business and had not previously supplied any equipment to the carrier. Tellabs won the business because its product was rated the highest in TIME’s stringent internal tests and because decision-makers were impressed by Tellabs’ responsiveness to their needs. “What interested us most was the mesh protection,” Azman said. Tellabs was one of only a few vendors


that would be able to support mesh protection capability using GMPLS at the wavelength level. This was critical for supporting TIME’s 5 fiber routes running across Malaysia. Tellabs is in the process of enhancing the Tellabs 7100 OTS to support


this capability, which it has scheduled for delivery in third quarter 2010. By using GMPLS-based mesh protection at the wavelength level, each of TIME’s fiber paths will have 4 different backup paths. Traffic can be switched onto those paths instantaneously, helping ensure connectivity even in the event of multiple fiber cuts. This mesh protection scheme enables TIME to offer service with 99.999% reliability.


Proof on a Tight Timeline Prior to deploying DWDM, TIME wanted to do a proof of concept involving a limited installation of the DWDM equipment.


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