At the end of August 2018, Proximus announced its programme to tenfold the capacity of its IP transport network with its TITAN project. Nokia and Proximus have now announced that they are on schedule with their ‘TITAN’ (Terabit IP Transport and Aggregation Network) backbone network upgrade with 165 out of 600 buildings connected and 30% of 50,000 optical fibres migrated after only seven months.
Proximus is one of the first operators in the world to carry customers’ traffic on the Nokia 7750 Service Router-14s (SR-14s). Thanks to its unprecedented routing capability, the new equipment will allow the Proximus network to cope with the rise of data traffic of the coming decade, boosted by the ongoing Fibre for Belgium investment. This router will also help Proximus to lower costs by cutting energy use in half, offer unique security features and enable a superior digital experience for its customers.
For this project, Proximus, Belgium’s largest telco operator, worked in close partnership with Nokia’s team located in Antwerp, a Belgium World Competence Centre. TITAN will connect Proximus’ mobile, high-speed DSL and FTTH networks. The upgraded backbone will provide support for new services such as augmented and Virtual Reality, IoT and the rollout of 5G.
Patrick Delcoigne, Director Network Engineering and Operations at Proximus, said: “TITAN is laying the foundations of a hyperscale network, propelling Proximus into the terabit era. The track record of Nokia and Proximus in IP network innovation is extending with our tandem becoming among the world’s pioneers in activating the biggest equipment ever deployed in a telecom operator network, defining the new capacity reference standards. I’m really proud of the R&D crews and of the project teams of both companies who did a fantastic job to create the future standards.”
Sri Reddy, President of IP/Optical Networks at Nokia, said: “We have a long and proud history of partnering with the team at Proximus and so are especially pleased to be working closely with it to help ensure the TITAN network upgrade project continues flawlessly. With the Nokia 7750 SR-14s as the foundational technology of this smart, dynamic network fabric, Proximus is laying the groundwork to meet the future digital demands of its consumer, enterprise and mobile customers.”
The migration will continue until 2021 and is carried out in stages, each time for a specific geographic area and with minimal regional impact. The Proximus teams perform these infrastructure works between midnight and 6am to limit the customer impact to a minimum.
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