GTS CE selects Ciena to improve service delivery in Romania

LINTHICUM, USA & LONDON, UK: Ciena Corp. announced that GTS Telecom, a Romanian service provider and part of GTS Central Europe (GTS CE), the fast-growing alternative carrier in the Central and Eastern Europe region, is future-proofing its network with the CN 4200 FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform family to address rising demand for capacity and new services, including 10 Gbps Ethernet (10 GbE).

GTS CE boasts an extensive regional infrastructure across its primary countries of operation, which include Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, and serves a large number of fully integrated national and metropolitan area networks across those geographies. The operator provides high-bandwidth data, Ethernet, IP/MPLS and data center services to business customers, as well as services to other carriers, mobile operators and providers of content, applications and Internet services.

With demand for its private line and business services rapidly growing, GTS CE in Romania found its legacy 2.5 Gbps DWDM optical transport network insufficient to support its rapidly expanding international customer base. After considering a potentially challenging and troublesome network-wide upgrade, the service provider decided to replace its existing infrastructure with a flexible, resilient and scalable next-generation DWDM architecture.

GTS CE selected Ciena’s CN 4200 Advanced Services Platform family for deployment across 14 locations in Romania for 10 Gbps optical transport. To meet the mission critical network requirements of its end users, GTS CE deployed CN 4200 to ensure optimal reliability of a fully redundant ring-based network with the optical flexibility of Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) technology, allowing the operator to dynamically add, drop or change optical channels at any location on the network.

This approach enables the network automation required to deliver new optical services faster while improving overall system efficiency and reducing cost. In addition, GTS CE deployed CN 4200 in a configuration with packet optical transport capabilities, giving it the ability to offer advanced Layer 2 Ethernet services from 10/100 Mbps to 10 Gbps alongside traditional optical services.

“With Ciena’s CN 4200 platform, I’m confident that we operate one of the most flexible and scalable networks in Europe, capable of supporting an array of services, including TDM and Ethernet, leased bandwidth, data centre connectivity and video signal distribution,” said Ignacio Irurita, Chief Technology Officer of GTS Central Europe. “The co-operation with Ciena has been instrumental in transforming our network in Romania to a next-generation, resilient infrastructure that enables us to deliver enhanced services to our customers.”

“In today’s business environment, end users continue to demand more bandwidth, more flexibility and greater network reliability – both in the consumer and in the enterprise market,” said Francois Locoh-Donou, vice president and general manager of Ciena in EMEA. “GTS Central Europe has consistently demonstrated an innovative approach to developing its networks, with the constant goal of delivering network flexibility and service reliability to its customers. We’re proud that Ciena is an integral part of this progressive approach.”

GTS Telecom is the third subsidiary of GTS Central Europe to become a Ciena customer, following network build-outs in Poland and Czech Republic, both announced in 2009.