Nokia and Swisscom complete project NEWTON

As part of the optical network modernisation Nokia deployed an Optical Transport Network (OTN) and Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) approach which aims to improve both capacity and bandwidth efficiency across Swisscom network. The NEWTON project included the rollout of 22 backbone sites and 560 metro sites.

The deployment seems to have been completed ahead of schedule marking the start of the service migration which will be jointly managed by the vendor and operator.

All fixed and wireless traffic will be transported from customer-provided equipment to metro access to the backbone on the new optical network. This will support client services from 1G to 400G, aggregate and manage traffic from end-to-end, and maximise fibre usage.

The operator chose Nokia’s optical network hardware, software, and professional services to modernise its entire optical network ensuring high availability and bolster network resiliency to business-critical fixed and wireless services.

The need for such “service-centric network” has come amid a surge in Swisscom’s traffic growth, driven by remote work and learning, entertainment applications, and cloud computing. The optical networking solution will handle the traffic growth by eliminating repetitive tasks, accelerating service delivery, and reducing overall cost of ownership. An additional benefit includes the reduction of power consumption for the telco.

“The transformation of Swisscom’s optical network is essential for our future digitalization” said Swisscom CEO Christoph Aeschlimann. “Through the partnership with Nokia, we have a network that can quickly adapt to changes and provide superior service to our customers while contributing to our sustainability goals. We are pleased to move to this next stage of service migration, working together with Nokia as our trusted partner.”

The modernised network can now more easily address a yearly capacity growth of 25% and ensuring the network can sustain high performance while adhering to service level agreements.

“This is a showcase service-centric network, fully leveraging automation to streamline service delivery and minimize costs, even as it effortlessly scales to support surging customer traffic demands.” said Federico Guillén, President of Network Infrastructure at Nokia.