Ribbon upgrades Lepida ScpA’s broadband network in partnership with TIM

Westford, MA – Ribbon Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: RBBN), a global provider of real time communications software and packet and optical transport solutions to service providers, enterprises, and critical infrastructure sectors, today announced that, along with its partner TIM, it has been selected to expand the capacity of Lepida ScpA’s regional broadband network. The solution leverages Ribbon’s Apollo product line.

Lepida was established by the Emilia-Romagna Regional Government in 2007 to design, implement and manage broadband infrastructure for the region’s public administrations and public entities.

“Public administration entities have seen their bandwidth requirements grow exponentially due to accelerated digitization and COVID-19 related restrictions. Our challenge has been to quickly deliver the increased capacity and additional bandwidth our customers need,” said Professor Gianluca Mazzini, CEO, Lepida. “Working with Ribbon and TIM enabled us to rapidly expand our network capabilities with a flexible, scalable and configurable solution and provide our customers with value-added encrypted services.”

Ribbon is adding selectively encryptable Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel services, and providing Lepida with enhanced connectivity between the region’s main POPs and data centers with 200G flexgrid protected lambdas. The network is based on a mesh of interconnected rings leveraging Apollo 9600 ROADMs (Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexer) throughout and 9900 series OTN switches at hub nodes to ensure efficient resource allocation and accelerate end-to-end service provisioning.

“Lepida performs a vital function in Emilia-Romagna, and the provisioning of bandwidth services has only become more critical with increasing demands due to the pandemic,” said Barak Eitan, Head of South Europe, Ribbon. “Our advanced Optical Transport Networking (OTN) solutions, and our partnership with TIM, enable Lepida to continue to perform its mission in these unprecedented times.”

The Apollo family of optical transport and switching platforms interwork seamlessly to provide scalable, high-density and energy-efficient solutions from access to core. Apollo enables service providers to deploy programmable and open optical networks that lower the cost per bit while simultaneously providing packet services, high-efficiency end-to-end operations and SDN applications.