Verizon Announces Major Infrastructure Upgrades

Verizon says it’s building more control-plane technology into its network infrastructure to allow electronic devices on its optical network to communicate more easily with each other, to simplify operations and to achieve near real-time provisioning of specified new circuits.

In addition, Verizon will extend 100G technology into its metro network worldwide to provide the same functionality as 100G long haul. “These two key initiatives will allow Verizon to provide greater scalability and functionality while supporting higher access speeds,” the carrier notes.

Comments Ihab Tarazi, vice president/Global IP and Transport Planning and Technology, "It’s no longer about miles and scope. It’s about leveraging strategies that further enable us to deliver the promise of cloud-based and mobility-enabled industry solutions."

To extend its control plane infrastructure, Verizon deployed the Ciena 5430 Reconfigurable Switching System it says features advanced Optical Transport Network aggregation and switching software to provide growth and resiliency for enterprise customers requiring high-speed, high-performance, transparent wavelength services with higher bit rates and greater availability than what conventional SONET networks provide.

“The control plane initiative enables end-to-end optical transport network functionality and global mesh architecture capabilities,” company literature adds. “This architecture creates additional paths to quickly and seamlessly reroute traffic in the event of multiple breaks or network disruptions. During a natural or man-made disaster, Verizon can automatically reroute customer traffic to an equivalent available network path without human intervention, thereby increasing service resiliency.”

Verizon’s extension of 100G coherent technology will provide broader access coverage for government and large-business customers; it will be deployed into major global metro markets during 1H13.