Customer Profiles

Columbus Communications

Rapidly growing Pan-Caribbean carrier Columbus Communications deployed Force10’s Traverse platform to deliver any mix of SONET, SDH, TDM and Ethernet services:

Columbus Communications is a diversified telecommunications company operating in 21 countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Columbus provides cable television services‚ high speed internet access‚ digital telephone and internet infrastructure services. The company is also the 94 percent owner and principal operator of the Caribbean’s largest subsea transport network, the 14,000 km Americas Region Caribbean Optical-ring System (ARCOS)‚ a pan-Caribbean fiber ring through which Columbus provides wholesale, high-speed bandwidth capacity to telecommunications companies and Internet Service Providers.

The Challenge
Columbus’ vision is to expand metro access services into the Bahamas and other Caribbean nations as a competitive local service provider while maintaining its wholesale transport business throughout the region. To realize this vision, the carrier needed a highly flexible multiservice metro platform that could handle a broad range of network topologies and services. Force10’s Traverse platform proved to be the one solution that met its needs.

“For decades, telecommunications services in the Caribbean region have been hampered by restrictive regulations, but we have seen considerable easing of those regulations over the past two years,” says Steve Richard, chief technical officer at Columbus Communications. “As a result, we now see the Caribbean as one of the most exciting growth markets for new services.”

But before Columbus could deliver the services being demanded in the lighter regulatory climate, it needed to upgrade its network infrastructure. Based on networks that had been acquired over several months, the pan-Caribbean network included various platforms of various ages, supporting a combination of SONET, SDH, TDM and IP services. Because of the breadth of service demand and the network’s crossing international boundaries Columbus also needed one transport platform that could deliver SONET or SDH based transport for TDM as well as support granular Ethernet provisioning on the IP side.

“We needed to offer core backbone traffic services for other providers in the region along with a full suite of services in our metro networks,” says Richard, “but we also wanted to consolidate the number of platforms and vendors we were using to simplify management and administration.”

The Solution
After evaluating a number of multiservice platforms from all of the leading equipment vendors, Columbus chose to standardize on Force10’s Traverse platforms. “Among all the vendors we surveyed, Force10 was the only platform that supported both transport and access services with SONET and SDH in the same platform as IP services,” says Richard. “This was the ideal solution for us.”

Columbus began deploying the Traverse platforms in Jamaica in late 2006 and is now expanding into Trinidad. “Our goal is to offer transport and access services in every country that ARCOS touches,” says Richard.

Along the way, the Force10 Traverse platform is easing the carrier’s transition from TDM to IP services where possible. “Some countries still restrict us to TDM services, but in others the barrier is breaking down,” says Richard, “and it’s good to be able to turn up IP services as soon as we can without upgrading the network.”

As a unified platform with global versatility, the Traverse simplifies international optical networks and dramatically reduces costs by eliminating the need for multiple separate platforms.  Leveraging the ability to operate in either ANSI (SONET) or ITU-T (SDH) environments - or seamlessly inter-connect the two types of networks - the Traverse platform is a powerful and scalable international gateway solution. In addition to providing full high-order and low-order SONET to SDH conversion and switching, the Traverse platform integrates advanced Layer 2 Ethernet aggregation and switching to enable the delivery of packet and TDM services with maximum efficiency.

The Results
Currently, the Traverse platform supports TDM services on a SONET/SDH network, including DS1, DS3, E1 and E3, and delivers 2.5 and 10-gigabit optical links for transport interconnects.

Since deployment, the Traverse platforms have performed as advertised, with flawless reliability and ease of management. “Our goal was to be able to deliver any metro or transport service on one platform, and we feel that we’ve achieved that with Force10,” says Richard.

In the future, Columbus will roll out local metro services in the Bahamas and other nations, all without a need to change from one service platform to another. “Having a platform that accepts multiple services and standards keeps us on fewer boxes,” says Richard. “We had to make sure that the platform we standardized on was the right fit for all of our locations, and only Force10 had that flexibility.”

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