The rapidly increasing popularity and maturing of 4G networks and large-traffic services such as 4K high-definition video service are having a huge impact on the existing network. The explosive growth of data traffic increases bandwidth pressure on the transport network. Operators are more eager to introduce 100G and beyond 100G technologies than ever before.
Recently, Current Analysis, an internationally renowned telecommunications, software and IT service consulting company, released the "metro packet-optical platform product" evaluation report, which gave a comparison analysis on the technological and commercial strengths of various products from different suppliers according to the requirements of the 100G and beyond 100G technology market. The result shows that ZTE's new-generation super-large-capacity packet OTN equipment, the ZXONE 9700 received the highest evaluation among all the suppliers according to comprehensive indicators from different aspects.
The gradual maturing of high-performance and large-capacity packet OTN equipment can largely ease the operators' network pressure. Meanwhile, distributed services such as PtP video make network topology increasingly complicated. New services such as large-bandwidth dedicated line leasing and large-scale IDC interconnection create higher requirements for fast service provisioning and class of service. Therefore, the large-capacity switching transport equipment that has 100G and beyond 100G transmission capability and packet switching functions and that can flexibly and efficiently schedule ODUk granularity services captures the interest of operators.
The strong market demand awakens the potential of ZXONE 9700
Due to the above trends, giant equipment suppliers including Huawei, ZTE, Nokia and Cisco launched various distinctive WDM products to address the strong market demand.
For example, Huawei launched the OptiX OSN 9800, the new-generation large-capacity intelligent OTN product that integrates optical and packet functions and is oriented towards 100G and beyond 100G. Nokia expanded its 1830 series Photonic Service Switch (PSS) products in early 2016, increasing the fiber capacity to 70Tbit/s. On the 100G metro network of operators including Verizon, Ciena further upgraded its 6500 packet-optical network platform while deploying its 6500T series equipment, improving the future upgradability to SDN.
Driven by the strong market demand, ZTE launched the iOTN-based unified switching OTN equipment oriented towards 100G and beyond 100G, the ZXONE 9700 series. The products support optical layer cross-connection of 10G/40G/100G/400G wavelengths and packet switching functions, and accordingly ZTE can provide 28.8T/14.4T/9.2T/4.4T large-capacity full series electrical layer cross-connect products to meet the requirements of different network layers. The cross-connect capacity can be expanded by the cluster function in the future. The ZXONE 9700 received immediate scrutiny from the operator market, government and enterprise market and large-Internet enterprises after being launched in 2015, and has been widely used in domestic and overseas markets.
Therefore, taking the OTN features of various enterprises into consideration, the ZXONE 9700 Packet OTN product was rated as the leader in terms of comprehensive scoring in the "metro packet-optical platform product class" evaluation report released by Current Analysis in March 2016.
The evaluation of the Current Analysis covers the comparison of performance indicators from a number of aspects.
In terms of technology, the ZXONE 9700 series products adopt industry-leading universal cell switching, which can implement unified cross-connect grooming of ODUK/PKT/VC to meet the multi-service unified bearing requirement.
In terms of management, the ZXONE 9700 series products adopt a number of subrack designs with different sizes and different cross-connect capacities so they can satisfy the requirements of all the application scenarios from the edge aggregation layer to the core backbone layer.
The ZXONE 9700 overall solution that covers the S1/S2/S3/S6 series products are more applicable to backbone core networks and local or metro multi-layer networks. After being deployed gradually on the existing networks of operators, the products can meet operators' requirements for transparent transmission, flexible scheduling aggregation, and intelligent supervision of large-granularity data services.
According to the latest global optical networking market share report issued by OVUM, an internationally renowned consulting company, thanks to the excellent performance of ZXONE 9700 series products, ZTE WDM products witnessed the fastest market share growth in 4Q15; and ZTE has become the third largest WDM product supplier in the world.
This provides strong support for the ZXONE 9700 to further expand its domestic operator market, government and enterprise market and Internet enterprise market in China, and the global optical-packet transport market.
ZTE has been constantly making new world records in beyond 100G transmission technology
In fact, in terms of beyond 100G transmission technology such as 400G/1T, ZTE has been constantly making new world records. In March 2014, ZTE successfully achieved the long-distance transmission of 3600km on single-mode fibers using its patented technology, creating another world record in the 400G high-speed transmission field. In November 2014, ZTE announced a world record for using only EDFA to transmit 16×1Tbps signals for 3500km in full configuration of all C bands.
In January 2016, ZTE, in partnership with Australian top-class operator TMA, successfully completed the hybrid test of 10G/100G/400G over the existing network, indicating that 400G OTN is ready to be put into commercial operation.
In terms of commercial operation progress, so far ZTE has had more than 200 commercial projects for 100G OTN and the total line length is over 200,000km. ZTE's products have been widely used by top-class operators from Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Latin America. In China, ZTE has built a lot of networks for China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom as well as some enterprise and government networks. For example, ZTE built the west ring of the national backbone network of China Mobile. In the centralized purchases of China Telecom and China Unicom for national backbone networks in early 2015, ZTE got nearly 40% of the market share in each of them. Meanwhile, ZTE 100G OTN products are widely used in the operators' branches in different provinces, including the provincial backbone network of China Mobile Zhejiang Branch, provincial backbone network of China Telecom Hubei Branch and provincial backbone network of China Unicom Henan Branch, basically covering all of the provinces of China. In the overseas market, ZTE 100G OTN has also made outstanding achievements. ZTE helped important customers to build 100G OTN networks in Austria, Peru, Indonesia, the UK, and Vietnam, providing super-large-bandwidth transport platforms and super-high-speed OTN network solutions.