Russia-based global communications service provider VimpelCom (NYSE: VIP) has deployed coherent optical networking technology from Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) to support 100-Gbps data rates across its backbone network. The route covers 587 km between Ufa and Samara in central Russia.

VimpelCom will run the 100-Gbps channels alongside existing 40-Gbps traffic, both generated via Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform. The ability to run transmissions at both data rates over the same fiber enables the carrier to relieve capacity constraints while protecting its existing investment, Ciena asserts.

Ciena Platinum BizConnect partner ADV Consulting aided the deployment.

“As our customers have over the last few years become increasingly sophisticated in their use of devices and services, the traffic on our backbone network has grown exponentially,” explains Alexey Sapunov, transport network director, OJCS VimpelCom. “As a service provider in the leading edge of technology adoption, we are committed to ensuring that we have the latest technology at our disposal to address our needs, which has led us to deploying Ciena’s market-leading 100G solution. The ease with which the network extension was performed not only showed that any of our bandwidth constraint issues can be solved in an easy and truly non-invasive manner, but also proved that our infrastructure can scale as and when we need it to, in order to meet our customers’ future demands.”

“VimpelCom’s 100G network is, to our knowledge, the first long-haul 100G network deployed in the Russian Federation – but much more importantly, it helps the operator effectively address the very real issue of capacity demand, which in today’s era of sharp rises in broadband services many operators have become acutely aware of,” adds Sergei Fishkin, regional managing director, Russia, CIS, and the Baltics at Ciena.

Ciena says it has now shipped more than 14,000 coherent 40G/100G line interfaces to more than 120 customers worldwide.