Bulgartel Picks Infinera

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Bulgarian telecom carrier Bulgartel has selected the Infinera (Nasdaq: INFN) Digital Optical Networking system for a nationwide Bulgarian optical network. The new network will enable Bulgartel to provide greater capacity and new services to its customers within Bulgaria and to customers requiring international connectivity, as Bulgaria becomes an increasingly important hub for international communications. System integrator SmartCom Bulgaria AD is providing support services for the new network.

Bulgartel offers wavelength, SDH, and IP services on its network. Bulgartel has experienced growth in bandwidth demand in excess of 100 percent a year, driven by rapid growth in broadband penetration among consumers, increasing use of IP networks by the corporate sector, and fast-growing Internet traffic traveling from Western Europe to the Middle East and Asia. Growing Internet use in the Middle East and Central Asia is driving more IP traffic through Bulgaria and Turkey, the main communications crossroads linking those markets to Western Europe. Within Bulgaria, broadband penetration to the home is growing rapidly, driven by low subscription charges and widespread availability of access connections. Rising prosperity today is enabling more and more consumers to subscribe to Internet services.

Bulgartel chose Infinera because Infinera’s Bandwidth Virtualization™ architecture enables Bulgartel to install and configure circuits quickly and cost-effectively in a range of protocols and bit rates including Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and SDH, from STM-1 to STM-64. In addition, the simplicity and ease of operation of the Infinera system allows Bulgartel to deploy the network with a much smaller team of optical experts than would be possible with a traditional DWDM (dense wavelength-division multiplexing) optical system.

“We chose Infinera because it fits perfectly our company strategy for responding to customer service requests with the best quality and the fastest response time. Growing competition in the Bulgarian market requires Bulgartel to adopt the most competitive technologies and marketing policies. So we have chosen to start with the implementation of a state of the art technology, Infinera’s digital optical networking systems,” said Dimitar Bambov, CEO of Bulgartel.

Infinera Corp. (Nasdaq: INFN)