Virgin Media has teamed with Nortel and Juniper Networks to prepare to meet ongoing network demands from its customers for ever-increasing speed and bandwidth. The 40G North-South trial, on Virgin Media's existing 10G network, shows how Virgin Media is ready to respond to the growing customer appetite for bandwidth-hungry entertainment services such as catch-up TV, video-on-demand, advanced multimedia communications and high speed Internet with up to 20Mb and 50Mb now in trials. The successful 40G trial, conducted over a 350km (217 mile) span of Virgin Media's current UK 10G network, demonstrated the economic feasibility of optimizing existing optical network assets and scaling the network to achieve market-leading transmission rates. For the trial, believed to be the first of its kind in the UK, Nortel provided 40G Adaptive Optical Engine  DWDM transponder cards which interconnected with Juniper Networks T-series routers with 40G interfaces located at sites in Manchester and London. The live field trial, conducted in late April 2008, carried 40G traffic generated by Virgin Media and delivered over its long-haul optical network between Manchester and London . The trial effectively positions Virgin Media as the first UK operator to offer 40G wavelength services between UK locations and, following the success of the pilot, the company is now looking to deploy.This will enable Virgin Media to continue to grow and scale new premium-quality business and entertainment services with low incremental investment.
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