Fujitsu Expands its UK Dark Fibre Optic Network Coverage and Capacity

Fujitsu UK has announced the expansion of its 100G Dark Fibre network to cover an additional 2,500km of fibre optic cable, which supports “true” 100Gbps (Gigabits per second) data capacity across its carrier-grade Managed Wavelength Service (MWS) network.

Dark Fibre typically refers to high capacity fibre optic cable that is either not presently being used (i.e. retained to help handle demand for future capacity) or has only been provided for corporate purposes, such as to supply big businesses and or ISPs.

Fujitsu is known to have one of the UK’s largest Dark Fibre networks with more than 6,000km in the ground, most of which is managed in partnership with UK collocation data centre operator SSE. This network allegedly interconnects with “all major Tier 1 and Tier 2 telecommunications and internet service providers“.

Andy Stevenson, Fujitsu’s Executive Director of Network Solutions, said:

“This significant expansion is a direct response to customers’ increasing demand to transport very-high-bandwidth data faster and further than ever before. An effective infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) begins and ends with the network; the true benefits can only be realised if the interconnect between enterprise and datacentre does not present a bottleneck. Fujitsu’s long-standing optical heritage ensures that customers get the fastest and most resilient service available today.”

Shifting briefly to techno-babble mode (skip this paragraph if you don’t care). The network itself uses ADVA Optical Networking’s 100G Agile Core platform with flexible reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADM), enabling real time wavelength provisioning and switching across the core network.

Separately the firm, which remains strong on the business and infrastructure front, has so far been unable to translate this success into the more domestic market where it has been trying and failing to win any of the government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) contracts.

Fujitsu originally planned to build an ultrafast 1Gbps capable fibre optic (FTTH) broadband network, using BT’s cable ducts (PIA), that could have reached 5 Million UK premises in rural areas by 2016. The operator has since said that it would need at least 1 million premises to make its model work, which requires a huge slice of public subsidy before it can even get started.