Case Study:

100G CAPACITY WITHOUT COMPLEXITY

O2 helped make the Czech Republic a telecommunications pacesetter in Central and Eastern Europe. Now they face the challenge of keeping up with that pace – and finding a simpler way to do it.

FROM A SNOWBALL diversity. This was both for the sake of network reliability, but also Building networks, TO AN AVALANCHE to encourage good old-fashioned “not for what is, but Early deregulation and infra- competition between providers. for what will be”, structure investment made the Czech Republic a tele- means solutions communications gateway for EMBRACING must be scalable to Central and Eastern Europe. In THE SIMPLE LIFE a demand curve that recent years, the combination of high-quality connectivity and low Whatever solution O2 selected, just keeps going up. business costs has led to a rapid it needed to reduce complexity. increase in the number of tech start- Building networks, “not for what ups, e-commerce companies and is, but for what will be”, means software developers based there. solutions must be scalable to a demand curve that just keeps going O2, the Czech Republic’s largest up. They needed a solution that integrated telecommunications would make life more simple. provider, has played a central role in providing this connectivity. Now, To meet rapidly growing demand their challenge was to not only meet from broadband and mobile the growing connectivity demands customers, O2 had recently of these companies, but also the upgraded its core technology with explosive demands driven by 4G/ 100G capacity. So it also made sense LTE and video streaming. to extend this single-port-simplicity to their international connectivity. But it was not just a matter of increasing capacity. O2 also As a starting point, they looked at wanted to increase network carriers who could provide 100G Case Study:

Who is O2? on their own backbones. Providers The changeover took less than O2 connects more than who relied heavily on leased a day and was achieved without 8 million fixed and mobile networks were not considered for service interruption. subscribers in the Czech two reasons. Firstly, the economics Republic. Their data center of needing to put margin on margin facilities cover more than UP, UP AND AWAY 7,300 square meters and don’t scale well in a market facing are some of the only TIER constant downward cost pressure. O2 are now where they needed III certified commercial Secondly, real reliability requires to be. They have achieved their centers in Europe. Offering multiple provider strategy and a full range of hosting, cloud real network redundancy – if and managed services – everyone leases the same stretch of have peering in place with over as well as IPTV – they are fiber, they all go down together. 0.5Tbit/s of capacity managed considered to be a market primarily on 100G ports. This has leader in fully converged greatly simplified network and services in Europe. 100G BEFORE LUNCH infrastructure management and traffic engineering. As soon as Following the bidding process, traffic exceeds 50G, O2 switches Telia Carrier emerged as the clear over from 5 x 10G ports to a 100G choice. As the first backbone port. This opens up additional provider to offer 100G-enabled bandwidth for customers and networks in both Europe and North provides the scalability for demand America, Telia Carrier already had to continue to increase. Being proven performance. Their global 100G enabled both nationally backbone also meant they could and internationally also simplifies offer one-hop connectivity to key their routing policy. Traffic is split destinations throughout Europe between their providers according and around the world. to the shortest path.

Telia Carrier were also already Multiple providers also provide well established in the Czech the network diversity and cost Republic, with existing competitiveness that O2 desired. connectivity to O2’s network Now they can go back to what via 2 x 10G ports in their matters: meeting the demands that colocation center. Upgrading from create the demands they need to 10G to 100G would be a simple meet – simple really. matter of putting contingency plans in place and making the switch.

Telia Carrier owns and operates one of the world’s most extensive fiber backbones. Our mission is to provide exceptional network infrastructure and services – empowering individuals, businesses and societies to execute their most critical activities. By working close to our customers we make big ideas happen at the speed of fiber. We are a part of Telia Company, Europe’s 5th largest operator. Discover more at teliacarrier.com