Du picks Alca-Lu for second phase of OTN rollout

Alcatel-Lucent has announced that it has been selected by Du to build the second phase of the Dubai-based telecoms operator’s high speed 100G coherent optical transport network (OTN) throughout the United Arab Emirates. The new OTN will enable Du to significantly boost the speed and capacity of its existing network and will support the surge of data traffic generated by the proliferation of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets in the most economical way. Alcatel-Lucent’s 100G fibre-optic technology supports a capacity of up to 8.8Tbps – equivalent to 1.32 million HDTV channels streamed at the same time – over a single optical fibre. Saleem AlBalooshi, Du’s executive vice president of Customer Operations and acting executive vice president of Network Development and Operations, said: ‘Customer experience is our priority. We constantly endeavour to develop our infrastructure, taking into consideration the digital age and the changing needs of our customers. The demand for data services is growing by the second and we selected Alcatel-Lucent’s solution to boost the capabilities of our network in order to accommodate future needs. We are confident that Alcatel-Lucent’s global knowledge will contribute to delivering the best experience as a result of this project.’