Operators can’t meet tomorrow’s challenges—or embrace its opportunities—with today’s networks.

Network operators find themselves at a crossroads. Existing infrastructure is well bedded in, teams know how to manage it, and investments in capacity mean they’re able to meet current demand.

But maintaining the status quo increasingly means missing out on opportunities. Legacy networks are getting more expensive to manage as spare parts and relevant skills become harder to find. That’s tying up budget that could be invested in new products and services.

Networks have also become highly complex, with multiple generations of equipment, multiple network management systems (NMS), and a proliferation of operational support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS). Cutting through this complexity could improve efficiency and reduce management costs and per-bit transport costs.

Legacy networks are also power-hungry, jeopardising Net Zero initiatives and potentially deterring customers keen to optimise their own Scope 3 emissions.

While operators may be able to get by with today’s networks, the infrastructure is less and less able to support growth, innovation, diversification and sustainability. Operators that want to reduce costs and address new types of demand must find ways to modernise, transform and scale the network.

What does a transformed network look like?

What might that network transformation look like? While some operators (and some vendors) think of it as simply making networks more autonomous, Ciena is looking a step further ahead. Emerging use cases are so varied—from massive IoT to remote robotic surgery—that tomorrow’s network needs to be more than just self-managing and self-healing.

It needs to be flexible enough to meet demand in whatever direction the business wants to head, whether that’s in transporting surging volumes of AI content, offering mobile gigabit-per-second broadband for everyone, enabling autonomous vehicle operations, or all of these and more.

We have a vision of a truly Adaptive Network, capable of underpinning innovative new services and revenue streams for forward-thinking operators. Yes, it can rapidly self-configure, self-optimize, and self-heal by constantly assessing and addressing ongoing network pressures and demands. But it can also combine real-time streaming telemetry, data-driven analytics, and intent-based policies to dynamically adjust available resources to meet customers’ ever-changing needs.

How network transformation reduces costs

As well as being adaptive, the new network needs to be cost-effective to run. This can be achieved by consolidating multiple legacy platforms onto a next-gen network that runs on the latest in coherent optics. Ciena’s latest generation of coherent optics, WaveLogic 6, for example, delivers a 160x increase in data throughput (from 10 Gb/s to 1,600 Gb/s) per wavelength, providing dramatically more capacity and lower cost per bit.

A consolidated next-gen network supports integrating assets, inventory, OSS, and BSS, making it much easier to visualize and manage—and, at a time of severe skills shortages across the industry, with fewer staff resources.McKinsey found that network automation can reduce operational costs by up to 30%, through reduced labour costs, minimised downtime and optimised resource utilisation.

Finally, a transformed network is one that also minimises power consumption—further reducing costs and contributing significantly towards sustainability goals. This is something we’ve been striving to achieve with our coherent optics, with the result that WaveLogic 6 can deliver a 300% increase in fiber capacity with 90% lower power consumption per bit compared to our earlier WaveLogic 3 generation. It also takes up 90% less real estate, enabling smaller and more energy-efficient housing.

Arelion sees new opportunities and cost savings from transformed network

The transformed network is already delivering benefits for future-thinking operators. A great example is Arelion, which in August 2024 completed the world's first 1.6 terabits-per-second (Tb/s) wavelengths data transmission on its 470km route between its existing Points-of-Presence (PoPs) in Ashburn, Virginia (Equinix) and Telxius’ (Telxius-CLS) Virginia Beach cable landing station (CLS).

Following this trial, Arelion is now deploying our state-of-the-art WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) technology across its network to increase its ability to serve the surging bandwidth demands of 5G, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) applications, cloud services, content delivery and more for wholesale and enterprise customers.

The milestone reinforces Arelion’s investments in open optical networking and next-generation coherent optic solutions to improve performance, maximise energy efficiency and generate cost savings, and will set it in good stead for opportunities to come.

Get expert help with your own network transformation

A network transformation can seem daunting, even when there are clear business benefits to be had. Working with an experienced partner can lower the cost and risk of the project and ensure optimal outcomes for the business and for its customers.

Ciena has over 30 years’ experience of working with the world’s largest network providers, helping them to build some of the most adaptive, customer-centric networks. If you’d like to know more about our network transformation services, visit https://knowledge.ciena.com/services/.