Nokia, Furukawa accelerate Optical LAN in Latin America

Nokia has signed a strategic alliance with network cabling firm Furukawa Electric to accelerate optical local area network (LAN) deployments in Latin America.

The partners recognise that optical LANs, also known as POLs, are among the growing business services based on advanced optical fibre technologies, providing ultra-high bandwidth to support multiple high-bandwidth and critical applications for multiple use cases.

Optical LANs typically see use in commercial buildings and campuses to provide LAN connectivity, offering significant advantages over traditional copper-based services.

These services are said to provide lower energy consumption, increased security, more scalable deployments and lower total cost of ownership.

They are also attributed with bringing the extra capacity and performance of fibre networking, making them particularly advantageous in multi-floor buildings, extended campus networks, for applications using lots of data, and for sites with challenging architecture, such as historic buildings with “pre-connectorised” optical cabling and thin optical cables that require minimum infrastructure for installation.

Nokia has already deployed Optical LAN services for more than 450 enterprise customers across the globe, including hotel chains, manufacturers, airports, schools, healthcare providers and government.

For its part, Furukawa claims to be a market leader for copper cables and optic fibre in Latin America.

Under the terms of the agreement, Furukawa will incorporate Nokia’s optical networking equipment into its Laserway passive optical LAN offering, marketed by its partner ecosystem to the enterprise market. The partnership will first operate in Brazil.

“Because of fibre’s unlimited bandwidth potential, optical LAN is the ultimate long-term solution, available at 10Gb/second speeds today, but easily scalable to 25Gb/second with a simple change in the optics,” said Marcelo Entreconti, Nokia’s head of enterprise for Latin America.

“Nokia has deployed mission-critical networks to more than 2,200 leading enterprise customers in the transport, energy, large enterprise, manufacturing, webscale and public sector segments around the globe, and we’re proud to be partnering with Furukawa, which has a long history of working with businesses in Brazil for technology integration and validation.”

Furukawa vice-president executive Helio Durigan said: “The partnership between Furukawa and Nokia brings to our customers a state-of-the-art and innovative service that allows great benefits in sustainability with reduction in power consumption, and at the same time delivers a reliable and secure technological platform, enhancing corporate governance.”