Ciena Tech Acquires

OPTK Networks, a Nebraska-based regional fiber optic provider, is increasing the speed capacity of its 4,000 miles of fiber optic network from 100 Gbps to 400 Gbps. This upgrade was made possible by Ciena's 6500 packet optical transport platform, which was deployed on OPTK's long-haul route from Denver to Omaha. 

Ciena 6500 hardware includes WaveLogic 5 Extreme 800G and WaveLogic Ai 400G coherent optical modems. WaveLogic 5e, launched in 2020, can send and receive up to 800G of network traffic on a single wavelength.

OPTK's dark fiber, wavelength, carrier Ethernet and Internet solutions span Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa, and the company specifically serves businesses, service providers and utilities in the region. Smith said that at OPTK, the primary use case for 400G speeds "overwhelmingly" revolves around connectivity between data centers. “This is especially true in scenarios with national wholesale customers and hyperscalers,” he told Fierce Telecom.

For now, Smith said, 400G may be enough for him, but as "technology advances," the OPTK network system is already ready for him to support speeds of 1Tbps or more.

The partnership with Ciena makes it easy for OPTK to integrate OTN switching, coherent optical, and optical line systems all into a unified platform. By implementing Ciena Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controllers into your network management environment, OPTK provides centralized control of your network, including online planning to streamline and introduce new services.

Smith said it will take about three months to deploy Ciena hardware on the OPTK network, and the fiber provider is in an "ongoing effort" to migrate services to the Ciena  networks 6500 platform.