Vocus has announced availability of Australia’s first commercial 400Gbps Wavelength Ethernet product connecting Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.
Jarrod Nink, CEO of Vocus Wholesale, announced the availability of Vocus’ 400Gbps Wavelength Ethernet service in a statement, noting that it offers ‘almost five times the capacity on the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne route than the existing system’.
“We are thrilled to be first to market with 400Gbps Wavelength Ethernet services backed by a transmission solution that delivers almost five times more capacity on the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne route than the existing system,”
“Our Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne fibre connection is scalable, so Vocus clients can expand their businesses and extend their connectivity without the expense or delays associated with additional fibre wiring.” Mr Nink said
Vocus was able to roll out 400Gbps customer services over existing fibre thanks to advances in wavelength division multiplexing technology.
The introduction of 400Gbps Wavelength services
Higher scalability on customer backhaul capacity is enabled by removing or simplifying load balancing across multiple smaller capacity links with the introduction of 400Gbps wavelength services.
Reduced cabling requirements at data centre cross connects will be possible due to the faster speed on a single port. Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne data centres will offer 400Gbps services.
Extremely large volumes of data travelling between data centres or across intercapital links will benefit from the new technology. It will also be useful for core network transmission, data replication, data storage connectivity, and disaster recovery.
General manager network engineering Steve Haigh says Vocus’ new multi terabit/s intercapital DWDM system uses two spectrum bands (C-band and L-band), delivering rates up to 800Gbps per wavelength channel depending on distance.
“Vocus has doubled the amount of usable spectrum available to deliver capacity on our existing fibre pairs by introducing L-band to existing long-haul systems in Australia.” says Haigh
“Existing long-haul systems in Australia are only using C-band, and by introducing L-band, Vocus has doubled the amount of usable spectrum available to deliver capacity on each of our existing fibre pairs” he said
Australian-first upgrade to transmission technology
The new technology will be particularly beneficial for data-centre to data-centre connectivity, where extremely large volumes of data travel across intercapital links and for customers’ core network transmission, data replication, data storage connectivity and disaster recovery.
Series of Vocus investments in fibre
Vocus’ Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne 400Gbps fibre upgrade is one of many investments in fibre as part of a five-year, $1 billion programme to support Australian digital transformation and cloud adoption, increased bandwidth demand, enhanced security requirements, regionalisation, and new technologies such as LEO satellites.
Vocus has increased it’s fibre backbone capacity from Darwin to Adelaide, Brisbane, and Townsville by a factor of 25 since June 2021, as well as adding five times more capacity between Sydney and Melbourne (which now supports 400 Gbps).
The company intends to enable 400Gbps on its Melbourne-Adelaide link early in 2023.
