ZTE, Reliance to build 100G metro optical network

Chinese equipment vendor ZTE has clinched a deal to build a 100G optical transportation network (OTN) for Indian telco Reliance Communications.

ZTE will design, engineer, install, operate and maintain the 100G optical network in Pune and Hyderabad in the next three years. It will also provide its ZXONE series of equipment to provide multi-service access and integration. According to ZTE, minimising the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the network was the major factor in the Indian mobile telco’s buying decision.

Reliance is currently the fourth largest operator in India with a 14.35% market share but is investing in ZTE’s 100G OTN solution in a bid to speed the development of Pune and Hyderabad’s 100G metro area transmissions and relieve LTE bandwidth requirement pressures, it said. According to ZTE, Reliance’s synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) has failed to meet data communication demands. The ZTE equipment supports access rates ranging from E1/T1 to 100GE, and can combine dense and coarse wavelengths.

The Reliance technology upgrade follows a recent social media marketing initiative as the telco tries creative methods to compete. Reliance yesterday launched Digital Social Media Smartcare on Twitter to give user account management service to its wireless subscribers via the live public platform. This new customer service initiative will let users explore a range of account information and services without having to reach out to traditional customer service reps, it said.

According to the latest optical network product market report by Ovum, ZTE increased its market share in optical networking products to 28% globally in Q2 2015, higher than any other Asia Pacific vendor. By Q4 2014, ZTE had completed the deployment of more than 200 networks of 100G OTN with three major domestic operators in China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.