- Windstream used Ciena tech to trial multiple 800G waves over 1,590 kilometers
- The company plans to commercially launch 800G later this year
- Ciena’s coherent optics are uniquely suited to meet bandwidth needs for operators, said Dell’Oro’s Jimmy Yu
Windstream Wholesale is prepping for the next tranche of wavelength connectivity – 800G – with help from Ciena’s coherent optical technology.
The companies announced they successfully ran three 800G waves across Windstream’s 1,590-kilometer route from Virginia Beach to Jacksonville, Florida “without regeneration.” The news comes as Windstream plans to begin selling 800G wave services in the second half of 2025.
According to John Nishimoto, SVP of business development at Windstream Wholesale, the trial marks the first long-distance transmission of multiple 800G waves in a live network.
“Our early adopter customers are starting to ask about 800G services,” he told Fierce. “We do these trials to confirm the operational feasibility of these advanced services and make sure our engineering and ops groups are comfortable with the technology.”
Ciena, which used its WaveLogic 6 Extreme platform for the trial, is uniquely positioned to provide operators “greater network efficiencies,” said Dell’Oro analyst Jimmy Yu.
That’s because Ciena is currently the only optical transport vendor that supplies 1.6 Tbps coherent wavelength technology. Others, like Nokia, Huawei and Cisco, offer 1.2 Tbps wavelengths that have a much more limited scope, he explained.
“Using a 1.2 Tbps technology, the longest unregenerated span length is well under 1,000 [kilometers],” Yu said.
In Windstream’s case, it’s essentially “optimizing the pipe” by splitting an 800G service into two 1.2 Tbps waves.
Without that capability, the operator could only support a limited number of 800G services and would have to allocate the remaining bandwidth to 400G wavelengths. “Nothing is wasted, but you are limited on how many 800 Gbps services can be carried,” Yu added.
Early 800G demand driven by AI, cloud connectivity
Apart from Windstream, AT&T, Lumen and Verizon have also trialed Ciena’s coherent optics to get their networks ready for AI and other bandwidth-hungry applications.
Indeed, the “upsurge of AI rollouts” continues to be the main reason cloud providers and enterprises are buying more gigabit wavelength services, said Vertical Systems Group.
800G wave deployments are still in their early days, but not for long, as the firm expects to see “a measurable increase” in installations this year.
“It’s just a matter of time for the wide need to connect at 800 Gbps speeds or higher, especially as companies build more data centers that require faster inter-data center connections,” Yu said.
But the road to 800G won’t come without some speedbumps. According to VSG, limited availability of services and equipment combined with “protracted lead times for space and power” can put a damper on deployments.