Turkcell and Huawei complete the world’s leading 800G trial on the live carrier network

[Istanbul, Turkey, March 2, 2020] Turkcell announced that it has completed the World’s leading 800G WDM trial with Huawei out of China on a live Mobile Carrier network. This gives Turkcell a competitive edge in high speed transmission while also driving the evolution of this technology in 5G era.

Turkcell is Turkey's integrated telecom operator, providing high-quality fixed and mobile communication services for more than 35.7 million subscribers in Turkey. Turkcell's network traffic has been increasing by 35% year on year, and with the emergence of 5G, cloud computing, and Big Data, service traffic will triple in the next five years. In order to be ready for 5G, the construction of fiber infrastructures and evolution of equipment and technology must make strides to cope with the challenges of digital floods.

Turkcell has cooperated with Huawei to innovate ultra-high-speed transmission technologies and as a result successfully implemented 800G high-speed transmission between two data centers in Istanbul. This trial leverages Huawei's latest ultra-high-speed service processing boards which supports the programmable and flexible adjustment of multiple modulation formats ranging from 200G to 800G. By using the industry’s unique second-generational channel-matched shaping (CMS) technology, the latest Faster than Nyquist (FTN) algorithm system and AI neuron function module, the system can monitor complex link environments on live networks in real time to quickly and automatically learn and optimize network transmission performance. This ensures optimal spectral efficiency and transmission performance while achieving the single-fiber capacity of 48 Tbit/s. The trial also confirmed the 400G ultra-long-haul transmission capacity of the live network, which can implement 1040 km of unregenerated transmission from Istanbul to Ankara.

Mr. Gediz Sezgin, CTO of Turkcell, said that, "We continue our infrastructure investments to strengthen our existing technology and prepare our networks for 5G for superior user experience. In 5G-era, virtual reality applications, autonomous driving, and smart cities will be mainstays in the digital area. These technologies will pave the way for generating large revenues and transform our lives at large. High-speed data-needs will be at their highest, and next- generation technologies such as remote surgery and robots will offer solutions to a wide variety of problems. We have been able to respond easily to rapidly increasing capacity needs through the 800G and 400G long-haul channels that we have deployed in our network. Turkcell will continue to lead the industry on new technologies in the future".

Simon Lu, President of Huawei's Transmission Network Domain, said: "We are happy to work with Turkcell and complete the 800G WDM trial on the live network, which cements Huawei's leadership in the ultra-high-speed optical transmission field. Huawei will continue to maintain its strategic investment and innovation in high-speed optical transmission and provide high-quality, reliable, and evolvable solutions for customers around the globe."