Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has unveiled what it claims is an industry first — a WDM system that is designed for both metro and long-haul applications. The product, which is a new release of the SURPASS hiT 7300 platform, is the vendor's first major product development since the former Networks Business Group of Nokia and the carrier-related businesses of Siemens joined forces in April 2007.
The company says that other vendors currently require at least two WDM systems to cover the spectrum of reaches, transmission speeds and applications in metro, regional, long-haul and ultra-long-haul. "A single solution is the best way to help carriers respond to capex and opex pressure," said Bernd Schumacher, head of IP transport at NSN. "Having one platform for all reaches and applications reduces the cost for spares, operation and maintenance, training and network management, space and power consumption."
The hiT 7300 is able to support the complete range of applications by using a wide array of transponder, reconfigurable add–drop multiplexer (ROADM) and filter options on one platform. For metro applications it can support CWDM and DWDM on the same fibre, with DWDM being implemented on the 50 or 100 GHz grid. For long-haul applications the system has a maximum capacity of up to 80 channels of 40 Gbit/s and is "prepared for 100 Gbit/s", according to the vendor.
Indeed, the hiT 7300 offers a veritable "Swiss army knife" of functions, with support for point-to-point, rings and meshed network architectures, cards for SDH/SONET, Ethernet and storage-area network services, as well as a planning and configuration tool. There is even a choice of different sizes, with a full-size shelf for central office deployment and a flat-pack small-shelf option for customer premises applications.
Furthermore, NSN claims that the hiT 7300 can handle all these different network scenarios, while also meeting the right price points in each of the applications. The system is designed to be modular with "pay-as-you-grow" economics. For instance, network operators can choose to deploy ROADM functionality on day one, or upgrade their network later with ROADM functionality to lower the initial cost of investment.
High hopes
It certainly sounds promising. NSN hopes that the new hiT 7300 will give the company a stronger position in the increasingly important metro WDM market. "Low-cost metro WDM/ROADM is the only major market opportunity where NSN was perhaps missing out," said Lorenza Brescia, principal analyst for Telecom Strategy Partners.
However, Brescia believes that success is by no means guaranteed. "NSN is not the first vendor to propose designing a WDM system ranging from access through core. Marconi (now Ericsson) had talked of doing this several years ago with its MHL 3000," she added. "But trying to optimize a solution for this breadth of applications can be a real challenge, even with a modular design."
Is a "one size fits all" solution what the market is looking for? Like a baggy T-shirt, a "one size fits all" solution may end up fitting nobody particularly well – at least that's what competitors seem to be suggesting. Stephan Rettenberger, marketing director at ADVA Optical Networking, explains it like this. Large national and international carriers typically have a tiered infrastructure, and are happy to use platforms that are highly optimized for the different portions of their networks, so they won't be able to take advantage of many of the benefits of a unified platform.
Smaller regional carriers, on the other hand, simply don't need the ultra-long-haul capabilities the hiT 7300 provides. Given a choice between an "over engineered" ultra-long-haul platform that has been scaled down to meet metro requirements, or a platform optimized for metro-access that also has long-haul capabilities, the second choice is the better one because regional carriers have a lot more locations where they will need the metro-access type of functionality, Rettenberger contends.
Of course, it's worth pointing out that ADVA may be less than enthusiastic about the introduction of the new hiT 7300 because the platform threatens the vendor's long-standing OEM (original equipment manufacturer) relationship with NSN. The two vendors have ended up on a collision path, with ADVA expanding upwards from the metro, while NSN moved in the opposite direction. However, NSN says it will continue to offer ADVA's equipment to customers who have specific requirements for metro access.