Nokia has announced it is building a nation-wide optical transport network spanning 3,000km for FCCN, in Portugal, connecting universities and research centers in 26 cities. The network uses wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) to increase speeds by a factor of 10 over FCCN’s legacy OADM Node network.

FCCN – Technology for Knowledge is the Scientific Computing Unit of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, which aims to contribute to the development of Science, Technology and Knowledge in Portugal, provides high-speed Internet connectivity and IT services to the Portuguese higher education and research system. 600,000 students, researchers and staff can rely on its national education network every day. The agreement includes Nokia’s 1830 Photonic Service Interconnect optical transport and switching solutions, management systems for the dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) network, and design, implementation, and maintenance services.

Nokia submitted the winning bid in an international tender to build a new RCTS optical network as part of the 17 million RCTS100 Project, 13 of which came from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).The new DWDM network replaces FCCN’s legacy OADM network with Colorless-Flexgrid (C-F) reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) to enable simple and remote reconfiguration of lightpaths, and increases network capacity by a factor of 10 using 100G/200G wavelengths.

Ana Pinto, FCCN Director, said: “Hundreds of thousands of students rely on our network every day. The 10x capacity boost that this announcement brings us provides the essential bandwidth necessary for ever-increasing data transmission. The success of RCTS100 Project is fundamental for all the R&E community and we value the contribution of trusted technological partners like Nokia to fulfill the extremely demanding requirements of our community.”

Luis Bueno, Nokia Head of Enterprise sales, Spain & Portugal, Nokia, said: “Few industries have been transformed by connectivity as much as education. We’re proud to announce Nokia’s first deal with a National Research and Education Network in Portugal and implementing this essential service, where we worked closely with our Local Partner Axians Portugal to achieve this success.”

Notes to editors

National/regional research and education networks (NRENs) are non-commercial networks created for the advancement of knowledge. They connect R&E computing communities with needs unlike any other. They demand performance, sometimes on the edge of what is commercially practical. They require unusual bandwidth capacity, scalability, flexibility and data security without the constraints placed on them by commercial service providers. Over the years, nations and groups of nations formed collaborative networks to serve the unique needs of the R&E community. The result is that NRENs are the lead users of networking technology, often years ahead of commercial service providers. Advances in photonic transport and switching, combined with IP routing and open software control, bring NRENs the ability to better serve their communities with a powerful communications infrastructure that will further education, scientific and industrial research, commerce and overall quality of life – fostering collaboration among institutions.