SAUDI Telecom Company (STC) has selected leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider Huawei to supply new solutions to the company's next-generation metro optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) networks in the Kingdom. STC has developed IPTV and mobile broadband services in recent years, rapidly expanding the growth of its metro network services in Saudi Arabia. It is now facing an urgent demand to construct "ultra-bandwidth" metro networks, a statement from the company said. Utilizing Huawei's metro WDM products, STC will be the first operator in the Middle East to leverage world-leading photonic integrated device (PID) technology to save on both space and power usage of its network operations. "The PID technology helps us construct advanced metro WDM networks, provide multi-granularity services quickly and easily, and serve our customers more agilely," said Khaled I Al-Dharrab, transport network director of STC. "Due to its simple design and structure, PID technology makes it easier to deploy and maintain next-generation metro WDM networks," he said. The technology greatly simplifies the WDM architecture by integrating multiple key photonic components of the WDM system - such as lasers, modulators, detectors, multiplexers and demultiplexers – into a 5cm PID chip. "Compared to a traditional WDM network, a PID-enabled WDM network can save up to 50 percent of space and power and 90 percent of the fiber connection," Al
