SAN JOSE, Calif., January 17, 2008 - Cisco® today announced that Shanghai's Oriental Cable Network Co. Ltd. has selected the Cisco ONS 15454 Multiservice Transport Platform (MSTP) and reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) technology for its digital television optical transport platform. Oriental Cable, the world's largest cable television city network, becomes the first network service provider in mainland China to deploy ROADM technology.
Cisco ROADM is a part of Cisco's Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN), which enables providers such as Oriental Cable to migrate to IP-based networks. By adopting Cisco IP NGN, Oriental Cable can deliver new services to end users more quickly. Oriental Cable can also improve its operational efficiencies and capital expenditures while advancing the network and service control necessary for long-term business success.
The Oriental Cable next-generation network, aided by the Cisco ROADM, lays a solid foundation for completing the move from analog to digital television. Cisco ROADM technology will help enable a more flexible transport of optical wavelengths on a single optical fiber through the dynamic reconfiguration of the traffic distribution in a dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) network. This will increase the efficiency of Oriental Cable's existing fiber-optic network.
Oriental Cable, formerly known as Shanghai Cable Network, covers the entire city of Shanghai, broadcasting more than 60 channels to more than 3 million viewers. As the only company testing the delivery of voice, video and data services over a single network in China, Oriental Cable has been upgrading through digitization of the existing cable network, thereby completing its transition from a traditional cable network provider to an Internet-era, fully integrated network service provider.
The versatility of Cisco ROADM technology enables Oriental Cable's customers to enjoy many more applications, such as multimedia digital broadcasting, high-speed Internet access, business networking, digital television, video conferencing, distance education and real-time remote monitoring.
"The convergence of voice, video, data and mobility networks with advanced communication devices presents a wonderful opportunity for Oriental Cable to upgrade to a fully application-flexible network," said Wan Qianrong, vice president of Oriental Cable Network Co. "After careful review, we determined that the best way to transition to these next-generation broadband services would be to migrate to a Cisco optical network, which is best suited to support our increasing IP traffic volume."
ROADM Technology Offers Oriental Cable Many Benefits
ROADM technology, available on the Cisco ONS 15454 MSTP, is a networking advancement that brings a level of management simplicity typically associated with a synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) or synchronous optical network (SONET), to dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) solutions. Each Cisco ROADM-enabled node in Oriental Cable's network is able to add, drop or pass through any combination of the available wavelengths by remote control without having to deploy a DWDM expert to each interim site to manually adjust equipment configurations. As a result, Cisco ROADM deployment offers Oriental Cable operational simplicity, flexibility and lower operational costs.
"Cisco is providing Oriental Cable with an advanced technology solution that allows it to be the leading triple-play service provider in mainland China," said Hanh Tu, Cisco managing director of Asia Pacific service providers. "Our ROADM solution will help Orient Cable differentiate itself by offering its customers the most advanced and robust services. Oriental Cable joins other Cisco ROADM deployments in the Asia Pacific region, including Hong Kong Broadband Network, AARNet and Japan Telecom."
About Oriental Cable Network Co., Ltd.
Oriental Cable Network Co., Ltd. (formerly known as Shanghai Cable Network Co., Ltd.) is the only cable television system in China undergoing testing for the "three-network convergence." The Company manages the largest regional cable television network in the world and is the largest integrated network service provider in Shanghai excluding Shanghai Telecom. Currently, it owns 61 sets of transport simulation television, 121 sets of digital television and provides service to approximately 34 million cable television customers and over 50,000 paying digital television customers. In the areas of integrated value-added Internet services, Oriental Cable's network services cover 200,000 individual broadband customers and approximately 10,000 business broadband customers. In addition, Oriental Cable successfully implemented the official two-tier government network for the city and region of Shanghai, as well as for approximately 100 exclusive data networks for other professional organizations.