ZTE Vice President Zhang Zhenchao: Three Super Engines of Future Optical Networks

Release Time:2021-10-15
ZTE Vice President Zhang Zhenchao: Three Super Engines of Future Optical Networks - ZTE Press Release

ZTE Vice President Zhang Zhenchao: Three Super Engines of Future Optical Networks

Date:2021-10-15 ZTE Click:277

14 October 2021, Shenzhen, China - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the mobile internet, participated in the Optical Networking Digital Symposium held by Light Reading on September 16. Zhang Zhenchao, Vice President of ZTE and International Marketing General Manager of Transport Network Product delivered a speech entitled "Three Super Engines of Future Networks–B100G (Beyond 100G), Openness and Intelligence", sharing his insights on how the industry would work together to make innovations and accelerate the construction of optical networks in the future 5-10 years.

The continuous growth of service traffic demands is the driving force for bandwidth growth. According to the latest data released by Dell'Oro Group (OPTICAL TRANSPORT FIVE YEAR FORECAST REPORT 2021 - 2025) and Omdia (Optical Networks Forecast Spreadsheet 2021-2026), in terms of wavelength shipments, the evolution towards B100G, such as 200G and 400G, has long been a consensus in the industry.


Zhang believes that the first engine of future networks is B100G. He said the transmission distance of 200G can reach the same as that of 100G. ZTE employs Flex Shaping at the optical and electrical layers to improve the transmission distance of B100G by 30% while reducing the deployment difficulty and upgrade costs. At the same time, ZTE uses the proprietary optical domain equalization technology at the optical layer to increase the number of sites passed through by 50%.

"Open optical networks boast obvious advantages in reducing network upgrade and evolution costs and so openness has become the second engine," said Zhang in the speech. He also introduced ZTE’s compact product ZXMP M721, which supports ODUk/VC/Packet/OSU integrated cross-connect platform. With the help of the intelligent management & control system, the ZXMP M721 can work with ZTE's or third-party optical layer equipment to achieve interoperability, quick on-demand network configuration and zero interruption service, thereby helping the operators build open, flexible and efficient optical networks.


"Intelligent optical networks can help operators effectively reduce network provisioning and O&M costs, and improve the deployment and O&M efficiency," said Zhang, "Therefore, intelligence is the third engine. "ZTE introduces the new intelligent features based on SDN, NFV, AI, and big data, and uses the intelligent management & control system to implement automated planning, deployment, perception, and optimization in the full lifecycle of the network based on the cloud-native micro-service architecture. In this way, the company helps operators build customized intelligent optical networks with super management & control capability, rapid deployment, efficient O&M, and high survivability.


To date, ZTE has deployed over 100 B100G optical networks and over 30 SDN optical networks across the world, assisting mainstream operators in Asia, Europe and Latin America to deploy 200G networks. The company has also built  the world's largest ROADM all-optical backbone network in China and the first SDON network in Colombia.