Nokia deploys passive optical LAN at Orange France, delivers 5G for AT&T Mexico

Showing off both sides of its service sets, wired and wireless, on both sides of the Atlantic, Nokia has revealed major contract wins with Orange France and AT&T Mexico.

The company has announced that it’s not only deploying a passive optical LAN (POL) service for Orange over 20 sites in France, including the new Orange headquarters in Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris, but has also been selected as a strategic partner for AT&T Mexico’s 5G Innovation Lab, with the aim of exploring the development of 5G use cases suited for Mexico and the local 5G ecosystem.

Nokia Optical LAN services are designed to allow businesses, governments, airports, logistics, manufacturing, hotels, real estate developers and universities to reduce costs by deploying one simple network, add capacity to boost business performance and improve mobile connectivity.

They also see use in offering a way in which public and private sector organisations can address evolving service demands, and the Nokia Optical LAN at Orange France is said to be able to allow the operator to deliver superior user experiences and offer a low-energy solution for in-building and campus connectivity.

The new POL service at Orange France replaces the existing copper-based LAN, connecting more than 5,000 end points including Wi-Fi and hard-wired terminals. Nokia believes that its fibre-based offering delivers long-term value, and can be easily and cost-efficiently upgraded to increase network speed and capacity.

Security is baked into optical LAN with built-in encryption and central control, as all intelligence of the network resides in the optical line terminal and none at the user end-points. In addition, Switching from traditional LAN to POL technology is said to mean a more compact service, with less energy consumption as well as better performance.

“Moving to POL for our intra office connectivity can save significant energy costs and reduce emissions, which is essential to help Orange meet its ambitious environmental goals,” said Philippe Gacougnolle, Orange France director of the internal network domain.

Across the Atlantic, the project with AT&T Mexico is already underway, and is expected to conclude later this year. According to research by Nokia and analysis firm Omdia, 5G will enable $730bn of social and economic output in Mexico by 2035, and ICT, manufacturing, services, retail, real estate and construction will be the industries most impacted by 5G.

The 5G Innovation Lab was recently inaugurated by AT&T Mexico, to take advantage of the company’s infrastructure, knowledge and global experience in telecommunications. It’s a space designed to allow entrepreneurs, developers and users to meet to trial services to grow a local 5G ecosystem.

Under the deal, Nokia will provide equipment from its 5G AirScale RAN portfolio, powered by its latest ReefShark System-on-Chip chipset.

Nokia’s portfolio is designed for deployment scenarios including dense urban environments and wide-area coverage. Nokia will also provide connectivity for 3G and 4G LTE services, using the same hardware while offering a seamless upgrade path to 5G.