Nokia announced today that it is building a 3,000km nationwide optical transport network for the FCCN Unit in Portugal, connecting higher education institutions and research centers in 26 cities. The network uses wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) to increase speeds by a factor of 10 compared to FCCN's previous OADM network.
FCCN, the Scientific Computing Unit of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, aims to contribute to the development of Science, Technology and Knowledge in Portugal. It provides high-speed Internet connectivity and computer services to the Portuguese higher education and research system. 600,000 students, researchers and employees can rely on its national education network every day. The agreement includes Nokia's Photonic Service Interconnect 1830 optical transport and switching solutions, a management system for the DWDM network and design, implementation and maintenance services.
Nokia has submitted the winning bid in an international tender to build a new RCTS (Science, Technology and Society Network) optical network as part of the 17 million euro RCTS100 Project, 13 of which will come from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The new DWDM network replaces the previous OADM(Optical add-drop multiplexer) network from FCCN and implements Colorless-Flexgrid (C-F) reconfigurable optical multiplexers (ROADMs) to allow simple and remote reconfiguration of optical routes. It also increases network capacity by a factor of 10, using 100G/200G wavelengths.
Ana Pinto, Director of FCCN, said: "Hundreds of thousands of students rely on our network every day. Increasing capacity by more than 10x provides the bandwidth needed to respond to increased data transmission needs. The success of the RCTS100 Project is critical for the entire R&E (Research and Education) community and we value the contribution of trusted technology partners such as Nokia to meet the extremely demanding requirements of our community."
Luis Bueno, Director of Business Sales at Nokia, Spain and Portugal: "Education is one of the few industries strongly transformed by connectivity. We are proud to announce Nokia's first agreement with a National Research and Education Network in Portugal and the implementation of this essential service, where we have worked closely with our Local Partner Axians Portugal to achieve this success."
