CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL) has upgraded its optical backbone with the Infinera DTN-X platform, as expected.
Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN) announced the deal Tuesday morning. Among the motivations cited for CenturyLink's upgrade is the ability to deliver 100Gbit/s Ethernet services to customers and to its own data centers.
Qwest first started using Infinera gear in 2004, but it wasn't clear the carrier would continue doing so after being acquired by CenturyLink last year.
Why this matters
This was pretty much expected, as
Infinera has been talking about a U.S. Tier 1's interest in the DTN-X, and sources have been pointing to CenturyLink lately. The other popular guess was Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), which had participated in the DTN-X launch event.
The bigger picture, though, is the growing customer roster for the DTN-X. Infinera's bet on skipping a 40Gbit/s generation, going straight to 100Gbit/s channels and a 500Gbit/s superchannel, would seem to be paying off. The system has won at least 17 customers (based on the 16 that CEO Tom Fallon cited in October's earnings call) since being announced in September 2011.
I think CenturyLink was included in the 16 customers Fallon mentioned in the last earnings call, in which case, that number stands at 16, as far as we know. I'll go back and change that in the story when I get a chance.
"As a point of clarification, by Tier 1, I mean a traditional large incumbent carrier, typically with in-region and out-of-region regulated and unregulated business."
Bolding and underlying with the original post. Century fits that model with all of its business. In region would be Sprint LTD, US West and original CenturyTel. Qwest proper and Saavis would be the out of region businesses.
Just FYI, TIRKS is really simple and used extensively by all the old RBOCs. The other OSMINE stuff really is obsolete unless US West still uses TEMS or some other horrible nightmare of an NMS. AT&T and Verizon develop their own OSS software (AT&T in conjunction with its domain vendors).
RGru -- CenturyLink at this point is not literally traditional, but then again, none of the carriers are any more. Depends how seriously you want to take that word.
I think he chose that phrasing mainly to make it clear the customer was not a cable operator and not a Facebook/Google type.
Maybe I'm wrong. Do you think he was referring to someone bigger?
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