Utilities increasingly face pressure to provide reliable communications
for critical services. There is a need to maintain low latency
end-to-end propagation delays, a need to restore service in the event of
a disruption within 10 milliseconds, as well as a continued need to
operate within the harsh electrical and environmental conditions of a
power substation.
In response to this increasing pressure, GE (NYSE: GE) and Optelian
today announced a supply agreement to deliver reliable, high-performance
optical networking solutions for utilities. By combining GE’s SONET, SDH
and PDH multiplexers with Optelian Intuitive Packet Optical Networking™
and Optelian FLEX Architecture™, customers can build communication
networks that allow them to introduce additional information technology
applications while protecting critical operational traffic and ensuring
superior service quality. The announcement was made at the UTC Telecom
2014 conference, taking place May 6-9 in Phoenix.
Through pairing Optelian solutions with GE’s JungleMUX and TN1U/Ue
multiplexers, utilities facing capacity constraints on existing fiber
segments or requiring communications over extended fiber cable lengths
now have a cost-effective solution. Alleviating these constraints
without expensive capital infrastructure builds is pivotal to a
utility’s success.
“The alignment of Optelian solutions with GE’s multiplexers, switches
and routers is a critical step forward to help our customers build
next-generation networks,” said Tom Mueller, senior product manager,
optical networks, GE’s Digital Energy business. “Until now, critical
utility applications have remained isolated on our customers’ private
networks to better protect the integrity and quality of these services.
With Optelian, we now can improve our capabilities to deliver bandwidth
intensive applications like video surveillance and storage area networks
over the existing fiber network without impacting critical operational
traffic.”
Like GE’s JungleMUX and TN1U/Ue multiplexers, the Optelian FLEX
Architecture is modular and allows utilities to selectively scale their
network and deploy advanced optical technologies. The Optelian solution
can offer muxponding, reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers and
G.709 optical transport network at strategic locations to achieve a
utilities’ critical communications goals. This approach facilitates
field-upgradable “scale” to quickly augment capacity, extend reach and
provide essential optical retiming, reshaping and amplification for
additional cost savings. It also enables service separation specific to
each utility’s changing needs.
When combined with GE’s SONET/SDH multiplexers and utility-hardened
multilink switches, network engineers can maintain transparent service
pipes from 64 kilobits per second to 10 gigabytes per second and beyond
from their network edges, without the service-delivery compromises (such
as additional latency, inefficient bandwidth usage and network
complexity) typically found when protocol conversion is employed.
Managed via standards-based simple network management protocol, the
combination of the Optelian FLEX Architecture and GE multiplexers
improves utility communications with superior traffic segmentation and
guaranteed quality of service.
“Through the Optelian FLEX Architecture, utilities can grow their
networks and maintain critical separation of operational and information
technologies, supporting their converged business needs without
compromising on network performance. It’s a strong win-win,” said David
Weymouth, president and CEO, Optelian.
To learn more about GE’s multiplexer solutions, visit http://www.gedigitalenergy.com/communications/Multiplexers.asp.
To learn more about Optelian’s Intuitive Packet Optical Networking
solutions, visit www.optelian.com
or email info@optelian.com.
GE’s Digital Energy business is a global leader in protection and
control, communications, power sensing and power quality solutions. Its
products and services increase the reliability of electrical power
networks and critical equipment for utility, industrial and large
commercial customers. From protecting and optimizing assets such as
generators, transmission lines and motors, to ensuring secure wireless
data transmission, GE’s Digital Energy business delivers
industry-leading technologies to solve the unique challenges of each
customer. For more information, visit http://www.gedigitalenergy.com.
About Optelian
Optelian provides Intuitive Packet Optical Networking to deliver next
generation services. Our solutions are powered by the modular Optelian
FLEX Architecture to deliver services from access to long-haul, passive
to packet and 100M to 100G. Intuitive Packet Optical Networking enables
service driven networking, allowing operators to rapidly deliver
services while optimizing network capacity. We empower intuitive service
management through a simplified infrastructure that virtualizes network
and technology complexity.
With agile design capabilities and North American manufacturing,
Optelian can meet custom requirements to suit any network. Combined with
professional services to ensure your network is optimally planned and
deployed, along with world-class customer support, Optelian delivers the
technology and services that enable intuitive next-generation networks.
For more information, visit www.optelian.com
and follow us on Twitter @Optelian.
About GE
GE (NYSE: GE) works on things that matter. The best people and the best
technologies taking on the toughest challenges. Finding solutions in
energy, health and home, transportation and finance. Building, powering,
moving and curing the world. Not just imagining. Doing. GE works. For
more information, visit the company's website at www.ge.com.
Follow GE's Digital Energy business on Twitter @GEModernGrid.
Copyright Business Wire 2014