Proximus, a leader in telecommunications headquartered in Brussels, innovates and invests heavily in the modernisation of its transport network which interconnects all its sites and centralised service platforms. With its TITAN project, Proximus anticipates the sustained exponential growth of data traffic and strengthens the backbone of its network for the coming decade. The complete migration of all fixed and mobile voice and data services to the new infrastructure has already begun and will continue into 2021.
The telecom sector has undergone a dramatic development, reflected in an exponential rise in demand for bandwidth. Traffic is expected to increase tenfold over the next decade, driven on the one hand by video, streaming, audio and cloud services, and on the other by further growth in the number of devices requiring higher speeds.
To support this trend, Proximus innovates and invests heavily both in the access network – via the deployment of optical fibre, as well as high-speed DSL (vectoring) and the reinforcement of the mobile network – and in the underlying infrastructure which interconnects all the Proximus sites and its centralised service platforms. The TITAN network (an acronym for Terabit IP Transport Aggregation Network) will gradually replace the existing IP network which carries almost all the voice, data, TV and mobile traffic of our residential and professional customers. This will lead to a tenfold increase in data capacity and will facilitate the development of new services.
To ensure a smooth migration to its new TITAN network, Proximus will gradually replace almost 800 major transmission hubs and reconnect 50,000 optical fibre connections in 600 buildings. These infrastructure works will be spread over 2018-2021.
At the end of this migration, the 50,000 connections will each be able to process a capacity of 10 Gbps (a tenfold increase compared to today) to provide businesses, mobile antennas or street cabinets with optical fibre. The routers of the new network will be connected to each other via ultra-fast IP connections with 100 Gbps capacity. The TITAN network, with its decentralised architecture, will allow further mitigation of potential impacts in case of technical problems.
Working in close collaboration with Nokia’s IP innovation centre in Antwerp, Proximus demonstrates its leadership once again by being among the first in the world to deploy the revolutionary next-generation routers 7750 SR14S, the first routers equipped with multi-terabit processors – a real technological leap in the industry.
The migration will be done in stages, each time for a specific geographic area and with minimal regional impact. The Proximus teams will carry out these infrastructure works between midnight and 6 a.m. The impact on customers, within this intervention window, will be limited to the time needed to carry out the connection on the new TITAN network.
Dominique Leroy, CEO Proximus Group, commented: “We are committed to providing the best possible service to all our customers every day. This is why we continue to invest in our networks. To address the growing use of bandwidth and the rise in data traffic, it is key that we proactively strengthen our transport network, the backbone of all voice, data and TV traffic. This investment will enable us to continue offering a superior digital experience to our customers.”
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