Insight
At Huawei’s Ultra–Broadband Forum (UBBF) this year, Total Telecom chatted with Summit Communications Ltd., specifically Md. Farrukh Imtiaz, Chief Network Architect and Md. Nuruzzaman Rasel, Head of Planning. The discussion covered the cooperation, innovation and future winning for 5G-orientated fixed networks
Summit Communication is a Bangladesh based end-to-end infrastructure provider, and the country’s largest Nationwide Telecommunication Transmission Network (NTTN) Operator, providing one third of the total industry bandwidth. They have been in operation for the last 12 years, coming in when the smaller players didn’t have the opportunity to take the fibre connectivity to the end customer. The firm currently have more than 50,000km of optical fibre resources and end-to-end all-optical network covering IP and DWDM and aim to provide the best service in the market.
Outlining the best ways to build a leading optical network in a way that supports sustainable business development, Imtiaz notes that the end-to-end all-optical network that Summit Communications has covers all 64 districts of the country, and the network features high bandwidth, high reliability, and agile infrastructure.
“Currently, from 100G/λto 400G/λ, Summit are migrating the network, and ensuring that this is with the least transmission power consumption and the footprint that we are ensuring for the customers, making them more eco-friendly and the cost per bit for transmission they need to pay for their business is maybe around 40% down. So, if you consider all the household or the other things the fibre is hired from the telecom operators, it increases from maybe around 10% to 40% within last two years. And during the pandemic, the services enjoyed by the people, so the digitalisation happened in the country, so we were the trend setter for them to establish a transmission network even to the rural parts of the country.
Discussing the future of the company’s network construction, Imtiaz notes that:
“The technology industry is evolving all the time. It’s all about modernising the network, optimising the network, and increasing the capacity and the capability and the reach for the end customers so that they can easily access the service from the nearest sites, to help them connect with the end destination or the cloud they want to experience.
We continuously aim to increase the capacity of the network. The current standard is 400G/λ from country major distribution points, then within the metro it is already 100G/λ. We are planning for 800G/λ and beyond, and at present we are very proud to serve the 1/3 internet bandwidth of the whole country.
Within the next two years, we’re going to connect our network through our own submarine cable from the private edge side, so there will be looking for 800G/λ + capacity to be light up from my country towards the Singapore hub.”
As the largest NTTN carrier in Bangladesh, Summit Communications has frequently partnered with Huawei in IP scenarios. For example, Summit use a large number of Huawei device in the IP RAN and IP core networks.
“Our IP RAN and IP core networks use a large number of Huawei devices. On our IP RAN, Huawei ATN devices not only provide ultra-large capacity forwarding, but also differentiated transport for different scenarios and services. The products help us provide a high-quality network experience, for users, allowing us to quickly upgrade and evolve network capabilities. On our IP core network, Huawei NetEngine series not only provides industry-leading ultra-large capacity, but also ultra-high reliability.”
Summit’s work in this industry does not come without its challenges. In the IP access field, traditional private lines cannot provide differentiated transport for different users and services. As a result, many users complain that the network is unstable, and so their service experience cannot be ensured. To combat this, Summit uses technical solutions such as SRv6 and network slicing to be able to deploy 5G services throughout Bangladesh.
In the IP core field, according to Nurazzaman, “what matters most to the IP core network are large capacity and reliability. Large capacity is a must-have for an IP core node. Huawei’s NetEngine series routers provide the highest highest-density 400GE boards in the industry and support continuous evolution to 800GE. They fully meet the capacity requirements of backbone networks. In addition, we cannot afford an IP core node to be faulty, because any fault may cause severe impact on the entire network.”
Looking to the future, Summit Communications will continue to strengthen cooperation with Huawei on how to build green IP networks featuring ultra-bandwidth, high reliability, and high automation.
Want to keep up to date with all of the latest global telecoms news? Sign up for Total Telecom’s daily newsletter
Also in the news:
Unfair! UK customers decry mid-contract price rises in new survey
EU competition regulators give Vodafone–Three merger the thumbs up
Viasat to cut 10% of workforce
