Telstra makes 400Gbps services available through key Australian city routes

After concluding what it says was a successful trial with local operator Aussie Broadband earlier in the year, Telstra Wholesale, which claims to be Australia’s leading wholesaler of technology and network services, has launched 400Gbps wavelength services on inter-capital routes throughout the country to support customers needing robust, high-capacity fibre connectivity to meet growing bandwidth demands.

Telstra Wholesale’s 400Gbps wavelength services are available immediately on routes between Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane. Each route has three geographically diverse paths to provide additional redundancy. 400Gbps services are also expected to be available on Adelaide–Perth and Melbourne–Hobart some time in its 2024 financial year.

The Telstra optical network provides connectivity between Telstra’s IP routers and switches, and the deployment saw initial use in Telstra’s internet traffic and broadband connectivity.

The company said the current hyper-connected age now needs a hyper-connected network so Australians can stay on the cutting edge of the global digital economy, and hence the need to make significant investment in a state-of-the-art fibre network with all-new inter-city dual fibre paths.

Wholesale customers are able to utilise 400Gbps wavelength services because of the enhancements made to the operator’s high-bandwidth optical infrastructure based on Ciena technology.

The company, through its technology partner Ericsson, is using Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) programmable 800Gbps coherent technology.

WL5e is designed to enable 400Gbps connectivity services by quadrupling the data capacity transmitted per client service. It’s also said to be able to improve optical network performance and optimise power utilisation in Telstra’s optical network. Most importantly, the 400GE interfaces used also have the same physical footprint as a 100GE interface, which offers customers a cost-effective and sustainable upgrade path without compromising on any physical restrictions.

Commenting on the deployment, Telstra Wholesale executive Steve Long said the 400Gbps wavelength service would form an intrinsic part of Telstra Wholesale’s strategy of supporting customers with a range of services to cater for different demands.

“Data traffic continues to grow on our fixed networks,” he said. “High-capacity services are vital to help our customers satisfy growing end user demand while also making their networks simpler and more efficient. Our 400Gbps service is part of a toolkit of connectivity solutions for customers that use our diverse fibre network. With our backhaul experience and range of services, we can tailor solutions for customers to meet almost any need.”

In July 2022, Telstra announced that Ericsson and Ciena had made enhancements to its Next Generation Optical Network to increase the service capacity of Telstra’s optical network to 400Gbps Ethernet levels.