Swisscom migrates to high-capacity optical transport network

Facing high traffic growth and digital transformation, leading Swiss operator Swisscom has announced the successful completion of its nationwide Next Evolution Wavelength Transport Optical Network (Newton) and the official start of service migration to the modernised service-centric network, which has been optimised for high performance, cost efficiency and superior customer experience.

In its third quarter financial results, Swisscom said it was continuously investing in the quality, coverage and performance of its network infrastructure, consolidating its position at the cutting edge of technology. It noted that its infrastructure investment across the group had grown 1.8% year on year to CHF1.63bn and that that it was providing more fibre-optic networking for the whole of Switzerland.

At the end of September 2023, 2.47 million, or 45%, homes and businesses were connected to the Swisscom fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network. The company said its network expansion work is projected to see increased fibre-optic coverage to about 55% by the end of 2025 and to 70-80% by 2030. Including third-party networks, the company predicts about two-thirds of homes and businesses in Switzerland will have fibre-optic access by 2025.

Swisscom also said the surge in remote work and learning applications, video streaming, gaming and cloud computing intensified the company’s goal to bolster support for business-critical fixed and wireless traffic. The carrier has now selected Nokia’s portfolio of optical networking hardware, software and professional services for the entire transformation, which included the roll-out of 22 backbone sites and 560 metro sites.

The new optical network will transport all of Swisscom’s fixed and wireless traffic from customer-provided equipment to metro access to the backbone, supporting client services from 1G to 400G, and efficiently aggregating and managing traffic from end-to-end while maximising fibre usage.

The network will address massive traffic growth by eliminating repetitive tasks, accelerating service delivery and reducing overall ownership costs. Appreciably lower power consumption is also said to be contributing to Swisscom’s corporate sustainability goals by reducing its carbon footprint. 

Swisscom selected Nokia’s portfolio of optical networking hardware, software and professional services for the entire transformation, including the Nokia Photonic Service Engine (PSE)-V-powered 1830 family of Wavelength Division Multiplexing/Optical Transport Networking (WDM/OTN) platforms, and the WaveSuite portfolio of networking applications.

With the deployment completed ahead of schedule, Swisscom and Nokia will now jointly manage the migration of services to the modernised network.

“The transformation of Swisscom’s optical network is essential for our future digitalisation,” said Swisscom CEO Christoph Aeschlimann. “Through the partnership with Nokia, we have a network that can quickly adapt to changes and provide superior service to our customers while contributing to our sustainability goals. We are pleased to move to this next stage of service migration, working together with Nokia as our trusted partner.”

Nokia president of network infrastructure Federico Guillén added: “We are proud to partner with Swisscom on the modernisation of its optical transport network, and to deliver in record time during a period of tremendous global uncertainty. This is a showcase service-centric network, fully leveraging automation to streamline service delivery and minimise costs, even as it effortlessly scales to support surging customer traffic demands.”