XO revealed more of its 100G upgrade plans this morning, announcing that Ciena gear will be playing a prominent role. XO plans to use the vendor’s packet-optical gear and coherent technology to boost capacity on its metro and intercity networks across the country.
This is XO’s second such announcement in the last month. In August they unveiled a 100G nationwide deployment via gear from Nokia on its longhaul network. Today’s announcement apparently complements that rollout for shorter distances.
XO will also be using Ciena’s control plane and unified managed system to run things. They will be using it both for their own capacity needs, and eventually for managed 100G wavelength services.
Their willingness to spend capex on such a comprehensive upgrade certainly suggests that a sale is not imminent. Combined with Icahn’s recent sighting sniffing around Broadview Networks (which may not yet be finished), it seems that he’s decided to raise the ante. The extra capacity from the 100G buildout might serve nicely as an integration platform if he can find the right target.
On the vendor side of things, Infinera definitely seems to be the odd man out here, as they had been powering XO’s efforts since they first lit up that intercity dark fiber.
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Categories: Fiber Networks · Telecom Equipment
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I’m surprised here. This article is almost 2 months old and it isn’t full of XO and Ichan bashing.
I’ll be your clementine. Both of them suck.
You’re welcome.
Ciena LOL Good luck with that POS. Just went through the the 100 G sales pitch at our company and I will say you get what you pay for. We will be sticking with Infinera.