CityFibre Launch First 800Gbps Backbone Ring to Serve UK Cities

Fibre optic network builder CityFibre, which aims to cover around 8 million UK premises with their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network by the end of 2025, has partnered with Ciena to deploy its “first” 800Gbps capable backbone wavelength ring network across 29 cities and towns.

The move forms part of the operator’s planned “multi-terabit national [backbone] DWDM project” (i.e. boosting network capacity and performance). The 800Gbps ring is thus described as being merely their “initial” deployment, which will help to serve some 23 cities and towns, including 6 so-called “super core” sites in 2021.

The first ring will thus be connecting Leicester, Peterborough, Cambridge, London, Milton Keynes and Northampton. We understand that this will then be “swiftly” followed with two further rings, providing the same enhanced core capacity between Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Bristol, Coventry and London.

With an additional 90 locations then due to be added before the end of 2023, this will reflect the first phase of a national, multi-terabit, DWDM network deployment. Once complete, CityFibre will own and operate a “high availability, fully scalable backbone“, enabled by Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme programmable 800G coherent optics, 6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS) and Manage, Control, Plan (MCP) intelligent domain controller.

“With fully diverse routing throughout, the network will connect CityFibre’s own fibre exchanges and ring-based access networks to leading third party datacentres and points of interconnect. The Full Fibre network will support virtually unlimited data transfer requirements for the future enabling a fully automated, cloud-based platform with open access API integration,” said the operator.

The use of Colourless, Directionless, Contentionless (CDC) optical technology should also help it to build a network that is better by design, which in the future will enable CityFibre to offer open access, high bandwidth Ethernet and wavelength services of up to 400Gbps to be wholesaled.

David Tomalin, Group CTO at CityFibre, said:

“A significant challenge for service providers today is securing scalable, reliable and independent national service aggregation. Constrained by legacy footprints, poor SLA’s and lack of innovation. This investment will create a superior, physically diverse network alternative, whilst raising the service experience bar for our industry.

We are already using full CDC in all our major nodes and will scale this across our entire backbone network over time. Its automation capability will enable additional rapid network restoration in the event of fibre or hardware failure, plus greater flexibility to grow capacity, balance, and re-programme our network based on the evolving needs of our customers.”

All of this is ultimately about ensuring that, as Cityfibre’s network grows, they will still have the capacity to feed the rising demands of both their residential and business customers, while hopefully also helping to keep their costs down through more efficient management of the network.