NEWS EUROPE


POLATIS OPTICAL SWITCH POWERS SMART CITY NETWORK Optical switch developer Polatis has landed a key role in a new software-defined optical network that will provide the foundation for a smart city initiative in Bristol, UK. ‘Bristol is Open’ is a city-wide network


that will enable greater interaction between people and places. Combining sensors and endpoint devices with agile fixed and wireless networks and high-performance computing resources, the smart city will be able to respond in real time to everyday events including traffic congestion, waste management, energy supply and more. Paul Wilson, managing director of Bristol


Is Open said: ‘We are building in Bristol the world’s first open programmable city, a ground-breaking project aimed at providing a platform for the development of applications that will promote innovation and deliver a better quality of life. The foundation of the Bristol is Open


initiative is an intelligent fibre network. Polatis optical switches play an important part in bringing the fibre layer under software control. The optical switches support a software defined network (SDN) environment using embedded OpenFlow agents on each optical switch to allow dynamic control of resources. Polatis says its patented DirectLight technology enables dark fibre switching because the functionality is transparent to colour, protocol and speed.


BT PUTS G.FAST AT HEART OF ITS BROADBAND STRATEGY BT is one of the first operators in Europe to plan the widespread deployment of G.fast, a technology that delivers faster broadband speeds over copper wires. In a statement, BT CEO Gavin Patterson set out the company’s ambition to transform the UK broadband landscape from ‘superfast’ to ‘ultrafast’. BT will test G.fast in two pilot locations


starting this summer. Around 4,000 homes and businesses will be able to participate in the pilots, which will explore what speeds can be delivered using G.fast at scale. Deployment could start in 2016/17. Patterson said: ‘We believe G.fast is the


key to unlocking ultrafast speeds and we are prepared to upgrade large parts of our network should the pilots prove successful.’ The pilots will build on tests carried out at


BT’s innovation centre at Adastral Park, Suffolk, last autumn, when BT achieved combined downstream and upstream speeds of 1Gb/s over a 19m length of copper cable, and around 700Mb/s downstream and 200Mb/s upstream over longer lines of 66m. Like other forms of broadband over


copper wires, the speed provided by G.fast depends on how close the technology is to a customer’s premises. BT says it is likely to deploy G.fast from various points in the network, with pilots allowing the operator to assess the various roll-out options.


8 FIBRE SYSTEMS Issue 7 • Spring 2015 Baltic Highway opens for business


A new fibre-optic network could provide the fastest route for data travelling


between Eastern and Western Europe. Officially launched on 21 January, the Baltic Highway is billed as an alternative high- capacity route for connecting Northern Europe’s new mega data centres to Western Europe. The 3000-km-long network connects Tallinn


in Estonia with Frankfurt in Germany via Riga (Latvia), Vilnius (Lithuania), Warsaw (Poland) and Berlin (Germany). Onward connections to Saint Petersburg in Russia via 100G and Belarus via 10G links are also possible. Five years under development, the network


boasts 35-ms latency from end to end, capacity of 100G per channel and 9.6 Tb/s of total throughput, according to Data Logistics


Center, one of the three partners in the project. ‘Baltic Highway is like a freeway to Frankfurt,


only without crossings and border control,’ said Juozas Rumbutis, head of the sales department at Data Logistics Center. ‘This network is highly relevant to big data operators as well as finance institutions and banks, which consider fast data exchange important.’ Data Logistics Center is part of Lietuvos


Energija, the state-owned holding company for Lithuanian energy suppliers. The other partners in the project are Latvenergo, the state-owned electric utility company in Latvia, and Televõrk, a subsidiary of private energy firm Eesti Energia in Estonia. Baltic Highway has been built using optical fibre laid over high-voltage electricity lines and gas pipelines belonging to the energy companies involved.


Tallinn


@fibresystemsmag | www.fibre-systems.com


Survey counts more than 1000 rural fibre networks in Sweden


There are more than 1,000 community broadband networks in Sweden, either under construction, completed or planning to expand, according to the Swedish Broadband Forum (Bredbandsforum). As part of its work on broadband in rural


areas, the organisation carried out a survey of ‘byanäten’ or rural broadband networks across Sweden in 2014. First, it had to track down those networks. Using a variety of methods, more than 1,000 networks were identified, primarily in Southern Sweden, the majority of which are operated as co-operative societies. Even this number does not reflect the true


scale of the grass-roots activity in Sweden because some rural fibre networks have been built in cooperation with local government or sold to operators, and so don’t appear in the survey, the organisation says.


The ‘fibre to the village’ concept, which began


around six years ago, is one of the main factors behind the dramatic increase in the number of community-owned fibre networks in Sweden. Started by the Swedish Urban Network Association (SSNf) together with the Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF), the project encourages community groups to ‘take up a spade’ and dig their own fibre networks. The project was set up to help Sweden achieve the government’s target that 90 per cent of households should have broadband speeds of at least 100Mb/s by 2020. These locally-owned broadband networks in


rural areas are experiencing major technical, financial and legal challenges, and Bredbandsforum is calling for a greater degree of organisation for local projects so that they can support each other.


Sean Pavone/Shutterstock.com


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