SAN JOSE, Calif., March 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Infinera (NASDAQ: INFN) and American Tower announced today the successful completion of the first point-to-multipoint coherent optical transmission in a carrier network environment in Latin America. This field trial was conducted with Infinera’s XR optics technology over American Tower’s Passive Optical Network (PON) network in Colombia. The trial demonstrated XR optics’ compatibility with existing Gigabit PON (GPON) traffic over a single-fiber PON deployment in a metro regional area.

The proof of concept shows American Tower’s ability to take advantage of the transformative value that XR optics can provide in the company’s existing network infrastructure. With over 400Gb of available capacity per leaf, XR optics is designed to enable network operators like American Tower to dramatically simplify their network architectures and significantly reduce CapEx and OpEx costs while enhancing network scalability. This demonstration paves the way for American Tower to leverage XR optics to cost-effectively launch new revenue-generating services and 5G.

“As American Tower is evolving its network in preparation of new Edge Data Center and 5G applications, we are always looking for innovative technologies to help us achieve greater value on our existing infrastructure,” said Paul Choiseul, Fiber CTO EMEA & Latin America at American Tower. “The success of the Infinera XR optics solution over our PON network is the culmination of an idea that was born two years ago, when we shared with Infinera our roadmap to test advanced DWDM technologies over ATC’s PON networks. This technology will allow us to provide high capacity, ultra-low latency solutions over our existing PON networks that will satisfy Edge Data Center and 5G requirements.”

“The trial with American Tower provides another proof point illustrating how Infinera’s digital subcarrier-powered XR optics can be applied to existing networks and can seamlessly coexist with GPON traffic,” said Dave Welch, Infinera Chief Innovation Officer and Co-founder. “This represents a radical shift in the way metro networks can be built, promising a dramatic reduction in TCO, setting a new benchmark in scalability, and increasing service flexibility and velocity.”