Astound Business Solutions Launches Commercial 400G Wavelength Service across the U.S., Powered by Ciena

Ciena announced that Astound Business Solutions launched 400G Wavelength, a commercial service that leverages Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme 800G and WaveLogic 5 Nano 400G coherent optics to deliver the massive capacity required by large carriers, enterprises, and public sector organizations.

Astound’s nationwide fiber-optic network covers more than 41,000 route miles and provides connectivity for over 75,000 business customers, as well as to more than 100 data centers across the U.S.

“One of the main drivers of 400G wavelength service adoption is the need for greater connectivity speeds between multiple locations and meeting the demand of these higher-speed requirements in sites like data centers,” said Patrick Knorr, Chief Commercial Officer, Astound Business Solutions. “With 400G Wavelength, powered by Ciena’s best-in-class optical technology, we provide dedicated low-latency, point-to-point bandwidth to common carrier points-of-presence and hyperscaler locations.”

“Businesses of all sizes have made it clear that they need faster speeds now more than ever, and this new offering makes 400G service available to Astound Business Solutions’ customers from coast to coast,” said Kevin Sheehan, CTO of the Americas, Ciena. “While these businesses can benefit from localized capacity upgrades, Astound’s offering also boosts connectivity to 100-plus data centers within its network footprint, providing a direct link to the cloud.”

Another key application for 400G Wavelength is in support of educational systems. Today’s data-rich learning environments require secure, high-bandwidth connections across multiple campuses, offices, and districts.

Committed to addressing the digital challenges faced in schools, Astound is a participant in Universal Service Administrative Company’s E-Rate program and assists its education customers in navigating the rules and regulations for securing funding for digital learning initiatives.

“Teachers and students are dependent now more than ever on the internet for enhanced learning, document sharing and collaboration, and research. Our high-bandwidth network can handle these needs while allowing for future growth,” said Knorr. “This, combined with our E-Rate work, helps empower schools to succeed in digital and online experiences.”

Astound is deploying Ciena’s Waveserver 5 interconnect platform, powered by WL5e 800G performance-optimized coherent optics or WL5n 400G coherent pluggables, to efficiently deliver 400G connectivity across all network links. Additionally, the telco is leveraging Ciena’s flexible 6500 ROADM photonic layer for resiliency and scalability as well as its Navigator Network Control Suite (Navigator NCS) for multi-layer visibility and simplified network management. Crucially, Astound is building out its network quickly and easily with Navigator’s PlannerPlus and Emulation Cloud, which provide online network planning and design tools and an open environment for integration testing with operational support systems.

“This enables us to deploy the right coherent technology for any distance at the lowest power and cost—whether that’s Ciena’s WL5e for longer-reach links or its WL5n for shorter ones. And, thanks to Navigator NCS, we can do the calculations well before any hardware is deployed,” added Knorr.

Source: Ciena media announcement