Windstream Wholesale Trials Acacia to Enhance Optical Deployments

Down in the southwestern US, Windstream Wholesale has been putting some new gear through its paces. Today they revealed a successful trial of Acacia’s ZR+ digital coherent optics technology, and as a result will incorporate the gear into its deployment plans.

The trial took place on 1,027km of fiber between Los Angeles and Phoenix, one of the dark fiber routes Windstream added to its infrastructure in its buildout to the west coast. They achieved 400G on that route via Acacia’s gear, as well as 300G for the 2,054km round trip.

That’s table stakes these days for new gear of course, but the key pieces are the energy efficiency and small footprint rather than raw bandwidth. Windstream thinks those factors may make the technology their go-to option in deployments between the longhaul core and the metro, which could be as much as 80% of existing links.  They anticipate using the gear in projects in the second half of this year.

Cisco has been in the process of acquiring Acacia for some time now. Last month the deal terms were updated, valuing the company at $4.5B, and closing is now expected sometime this quarter.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Telecom Equipment