Telstra Launches Continuous Subsea Connection Service

Telstra, together with Ericsson and Ciena, has announced a new restoration service on its busiest subsea cable routes in Asia, to help keep customers continuously connected.

The new continuous connection service combines the vast scale and diversity of Telstra’s subsea cable network, with flexible programmable infrastructure technology through Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme solution.

Continuous connection builds on Telstra’s assured availability “Always on” service – a world first offering to key routes in Asia – which currently offers restoration within eight hours.

Telstra’s new service should reduce that time from hours to minutes – a significant reduction to current restoration service arrangements in Asia.

Telstra’s Head of Connectivity and Platforms, Nadya Melic, said that following successful trials in December, the new service is now available on three of Telstra’s intra-Asia routes.

“The Asian region presents one of the most challenging environments for subsea cable systems. Busy and shallow shipping ports in Hong Kong and Singapore, high-levels of fishing activity and an ecosystem prone to natural disasters, all threaten to disrupt or damage underwater infrastructure,” Melic said.

“Damage to a subsea cable can take weeks or even months to fix. But with our new continuous connection service, we are able to reroute customers impacted by potential damage to another subsea cable path on our three path network in less than 30 minutes.

“Through Telstra’s large subsea cable footprint and Ciena’s innovative technology, we are able to help remove the pain of an extended outage from our customers, with almost seamless restoration of their services.”

Together with Ericsson, Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme solution increases the intelligence of Telstra’s subsea network, enabling rapid responses to changing network demands, all without manual intervention.

The technology solution provides increased visualisation over Telstra network, boosting resiliency, and providing the flexibility and agility to give customers fast, reliable data access.

Ericsson’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Emilio Romeo said: “Through this innovative technology we are supporting Telstra to meet ever-increasing network demands and providing unprecedented levels of reliability, automation and intelligence. This solution gives Telstra increased capacity to adapt to network changes, ensuring customers receive the best possible service.”

Ciena’s vice president and general manager of Asia Pacific and Japan, Rick Seeto said: “We are seeing a growing trend for more agile, resilient and adaptive networks that use flexible, instrumented photonics and advanced software control. These innovations allow network providers like Telstra to not only scale their network and boost capacity but also protect traffic and service delivery.”

The continuous connection service is expected to benefit a broad range of customers, including financial services organisations, carriers and cloud services providers, saving time, money and improving the experience they provide to its end users.