JEDDAH: Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) and Ciena Corporation, a Linthicum, Maryland-based network specialist, announced Wednesday the activation of the first commercial 100 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) network in the Middle East. This regional first, deployed within the Riyadh metropolitan area, is an extension of Mobily's highly resilient, adaptable and scalable nationwide network, the company said in a statement. Mobily recently announced its selection of optical transport and switching platforms, Carrier Ethernet solutions, as well as management and maintenance services from Ciena - all aimed at supporting high-bandwidth services. The 100G coherent service delivered on Ciena's ActivFlex 6500 Packet-Optical Platform - the industry's first commercially available system equipped with coherent 100G optics - is key to that architecture. Mobily's new 100G capabilities give the operator the ability to quickly and easily add network capacity in the crucial metropolitan area of Riyadh. "This 100G deployment demonstrates our ongoing focus on innovation, aimed at bringing leading edge technology offering to our customers," said Abdulaziz Al Tamami, Chief Operations Officer, Mobily. "The demand for bandwidth coming from Saudi businesses is growing steadily, and applications like video, teleconferencing and cloud computing are fuelling a significant portion of this growth. By embracing Ciena's 100G coherent technology, we are capable of fulfilling the needs of even the most demanding of our customers, while future-proofing our network for the years to come." Ciena's 100G coherent technology will allow for a total throughput of 8.8 Terabits of data per second on Mobily's network, carried over 88 optical channels on a single strand of optical fiber. "Our close work with Mobily represents a clear validation of the leading-edge offerings across our product portfolio, from Carrier Ethernet to intelligent optical switching to 100G coherent transmission," said Ciena's regional managing director for the Middle East, Mashood Ahmad. The pioneer in coherent technology for optical transmission, Ciena is also the commercial leader in this market with more than 6,000 coherent 40G/100G line interfaces shipped to more than 70 customers across the globe. Ciena's ActivFlex 6500 platform equipped with coherent 100G optics has been operating in live networks since Dec 2009 and provides a simple upgrade path from existing 10G and 40G networks - increasing the amount of bandwidth existing networks can carry by as much as tenfold - with minimal network changes and investment to cost-effectively maximize traffic transport.
