CenturyLink announced a significant expansion of its inter-city multi-conduit infrastructure with plans to add 4.7 million miles of fiber in North America and parts of Europe.
The first phase of this overbuild fiber network, completed in June, connects more than 50 major cities throughout the U.S. The expansion leveraged the multi-conduit infrastructure all ready in place. The second phase of this expansion will include areas in Europe and will be completed by early 2021.
The project uses Corning’s SMF-28 ULL fiber and SMF-28 Ultra fiber in a hybrid Corning SST-UltraRibbon cable. With a silica core design, SMF-28 ULL fiber offers the lowest loss of any terrestrial-grade optical fiber and will provide the CenturyLink network with a boost in optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) which can extend optical reach at very high data rates.
CenturyLink said the added capacity will further improve the scalability of the network to meet the high bandwidth demands of emerging technologies and applications such as 5G, augmented reality, high-definition video streaming and the Internet of Things.
“Our newly built intercity fiber network, created with the latest optical technology, is another example of how our diverse fiber assets differentiate us from other network providers,” said Andrew Dugan, CenturyLink chief technology officer. “Our multi-conduit infrastructure has a significant amount of capacity for supporting the growing demand for fiber and will allow us to quickly and cost effectively deploy new fiber technology now and in the future. This uniquely positions CenturyLink to meet the needs of companies seeking highly reliable, low-latency network infrastructure designed to move massive amounts of data.”
“A next-generation network requires next-generation optical infrastructure, and we believe Corning’s fiber and cable innovations will enable CenturyLink and its customers to unlock the opportunities presented by the Internet of Things and other transformative technologies,” said Dr. Bernhard Deutsch, vice president and general manager, Corning Optical Fiber and Cable. “With the expanded optical reach and capacity provided by our ultra-low-loss fiber, CenturyLink will magnify the capabilities of their expansive, scalable fiber network.”
MEF18: CenturyLink’s Andrew Dugan on Network Transformation
What does network transformation mean to CenturyLink?
Andrew Dugan, SVP Technology Planning & Network Architecture, CenturyLink says it is vital to understand that customers are undergoing transformations of their own. Enterprise applications are getting distributed into multiple clouds. Some workloads stay in private data centers and others are moved into hybrid or public clouds. Carriers, like CenturyLink, must provide networking services that are equally as dynamic as the service offered by cloud providers.
CenturyLink is developing products that allow for dynamic service creation. This allows for new connections to be set-up, capacity to be scaled, and VLANs to be controlled.
Another area of interest is MEF’s LSO (lifecycle service orchestration) APIs for enabling dynamic services across carriers to public clouds. CenturyLink is heavily supporting MEF’s efforts in this area.
