Nortel to install fibre-optic backbone

Iraq’s wireline incumbent, the Iraq Telecommunication and Post Company (ITPC), has contracted Canadian vendor Nortel to install a 5,000km fibre-optic backbone covering 35 major cities and linking to the existing network that was installed, also by Nortel, in 2004 between Baghdad and Basra. The new network will consist of seven interlocking rings, each providing bandwidth of up to 160Gbps.