FirstLight, a network and business communications service provider, recently activated a 400 Gbps network connection on its fiber-optic network. The announcement is sure to be welcomed news to their enterprise and carrier customers throughout the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. The capability was accomplished in part with support from LightRiver, the premier provider of next generation, multi-vendor, Factory Built Networks® and netFLEX® vendor neutral, Optical Domain Control Software solutions. 

High network capacity and ultra-low latency are at the center of FirstLight’s fiber philosophy and this milestone is a notable one for the company. And in addition to serving the increasing bandwidth needs of its customers, the upgrade positions FiberLight’s network to support 5G technologies of the future.

“Launching a 400 Gbps connection on our network is a landmark achievement for the FirstLight team,” noted Brandon Peyton, FirstLight’s Chief Network Officer. “Businesses’ increased reliance upon collaboration and 5G has fed the growing need for bandwidth across industries. Given the projected growth of these technologies, I am confident this is just the beginning of deployments of this scale for FirstLight as the network can easily scale to 800 Gbps and beyond.”

Additionally, with Ciena’s advanced technologies such as their Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) and Liquid Spectrum apps, FirstLight gains real-time visibility into performance and the ability to proactively optimize the network and protect it from potential faults.

“Ciena’s 6500 platform powered by WaveLogic Ai coherent optics will make it possible for FirstLight to provide 400-800 Gbps connectivity over its existing backbone and metro networks, allowing for rapid rollout of high-capacity, low-latency services to quickly and reliably satisfy customers’ needs,” said Scotty Benda, VP of Americas Sales Systems Engineering for Ciena.

“LightRiver continues to believe that bringing best-of-class technology from Ciena to top-quality operators like FirstLight yields tremendous business advantages,” added Dean Campbell, Chief Technology Officer of LightRiver. “FirstLight’s deployment of 400G services over advanced Ciena technologies marks another win for our collaboration, as well as for FirstLight’s customers.”

Read the full release here.