Brazil’s growing demand for high-capacity connectivity is driving operators to deploy cutting-edge optical technologies to enhance network performance and scalability. Rodrigo Alfonso, Vice President of Operations at BR.Digital, tells us how the adoption of WaveLogic 6 Extreme enables ultra-high-speed transmission, optimizes spectrum efficiency and reduces energy consumption across the company’s national network. This strategic upgrade positions BR.Digital to meet evolving customer and market requirements while supporting emerging, data-intensive applications and attracting global hyperscalers.
BR.Digital, a leading wholesale communication service provider in Brazil, has deployed Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) to address the country’s growing demand for high-capacity connectivity.
BR.Digital successfully achieved 1.1 Tb/s single wavelength transmission on links spanning more than 800 km utilizing Ciena’s WL6e, demonstrating the ability to support massive and high-speed data transmission.
As data traffic continues to surge, BR.Digital is leveraging WL6e to significantly boost its network throughput while ensuring more efficient utilization of its existing optical spectrum. This strategic upgrade enables the company to scale its infrastructure, enhance service delivery and meet evolving customer and market requirements with greater agility and performance.
“Having worked with Ciena since 2014 to deploy flexi-grid optical networks, we are confident in the performance and reliability of Ciena’s WaveLogic coherent optical technology,” said Rodrigo Alfonso, Vice President of Operations at BR.Digital. “This latest network enhancement gives us a significant competitive edge to deliver greater value to our customers and get the most of our existing network assets while maximizing spectrum efficiency and reducing energy consumption.”
“BR.Digital is bringing a more connected future to Brazilians and positioning itself as an attractive connectivity option for global hyperscalers and organizations keen to invest in Brazil,” said Fernando Capella, Regional Director CALA South, Ciena. “WL6e helps leading operators like BR.Digital address surging traffic demands and offers low-latency optical connectivity across any path in the network, all while using less equipment and requiring less energy.”
We asked Rodrigo Alfonso, Vice President of Operations at BR.Digital. further questions to find out more about the project.
What advantages does the WaveLogic 6 Extreme bring to BR.Digital’s operations and service delivery?
With the accelerated growth in bandwidth demand, it is essential to rely on solutions that provide scalability, flexibility and high performance.
The adoption of WaveLogic 6 Extreme, aligned with Ciena’s technology roadmap, positions BR.Digital with a significant competitive advantage in the market. This technology enables the efficient and reliable transmission of speeds greater than 1 Tbps, optimizing network capacity and enabling new digital service models with higher quality and agility.
How will achieving 1.1 Tb/s single wavelength transmission change the way you meet customer and market demands?
With ultra-high speeds, this technology enables the agile provisioning of services, especially in critical environments such as data centers, cloud and enterprise networks—where low latency and high transmission capacity are essential. In addition, it prepares the network infrastructure to support emerging, data-intensive applications such as Generative Artificial Intelligence, 8K video, and next-generation mobile networks (5G/6G), reducing the need for frequent upgrades and ensuring sustainable scalability.
What impact will this upgrade have on scalability, spectrum efficiency and energy consumption?
This new technology offers advanced protection for our optical grid, being more than 50% superior in performance compared to the previous generation of transponders. Furthermore, it delivers a significant reduction in energy consumption, contributing to a more sustainable and scalable operation.
How does this enhancement position BR.Digital to attract global hyperscalers and other large-scale connectivity customers?
BR.Digital is strategically positioned to serve global hyperscalers and large-scale connectivity customers through a national network infrastructure based on advanced optical technologies such as DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) and Flexgrid.
These technologies enable the multiplexing of multiple channels over a single fiber, with dynamic optical spectrum allocation, optimizing bandwidth usage and significantly increasing network scalability and efficiency.
In a country with continental dimensions such as Brazil, this approach is essential to ensure low latency, high availability and high throughput, even over long distances.
BR.Digital’s architecture also incorporates redundant routes, high-performance routing protocols and integration with Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), enabling robust support, data center interconnection and Edge Computing environments.
