BT Prepares for 5G Network Upgrade

in order to add significant capacity to the long-haul connections between its data centres and the main Internet peering nodes in the UK.

18:55 18 March 2019

BT is getting ready for a 5G network upgrade to support growing traffic from its Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) rollout. It recently confirmed the deployment of Ciena’s Waveserver stackable data centre interconnect (DCI) platform to support mobile data traffic growth from 5G and higher residential broadband data traffic from FTTP. The move will allow BT to quickly add larger and multiple low-latency connections to its data centres while providing up to 2.4 Tbps of capacity per stackable device.

 

BT’s Chief Architect Neil J. McRae said: “We are launching 5G in 2019 across the busiest parts of 16 UK cities, and our FTTP footprint is growing on a daily basis. We have to stay ahead of the massive traffic growth that this brings, and the Ciena DCI platform ensures we can do that – quickly, making maximum use of automation.”

 

BT plans to deploy 5G in London, Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham this year. EE, a company that BT owns, is also preparing to upgrade transmission capacity to 5G sites to 10Gbps as well as filling out its selection of 5G smartphones and devices.