At the end of Period 4 of GN4-3N, all two deliverables and three milestones have been completed.
Key achievements during Period 4 (1 January to 31 December), include:
• 53 dark fibre and spectrum routes have been handed over to GÉANT from commercial providers and NRENs.
• 13 long-term, 100G leased services have been handed over and accepted by GÉANT from commercial providers.
• 47 routes have been fully deployed by Infinera with end-to-end testing completed.
• No routes are in the response evaluation or contract finalisation stage.
• A total of 69 routes have been accepted as operational by the GÉANT OC and are now available in the production network. This includes a small number of metro routes (e.g. ZAG1-ZAG2, LJU1-LJU2, GEN1-GEN2, MIL1-MIL2)
• 50 existing dark fibre or leased line services have been ceased following migration of traffic on to the new production routes delivered by the GN4-3N project.
• A total of 405 new Infinera nodes have been deployed.
• 26,047 km of new dark fibre of spectrum has been lit with new Infinera OLS equipment.
Key achievements completed to date on the GN4-3N project include:
• All routes now tendered and signed.
• Issued no new connectivity tenders for commercial dark fibre, leased spectrum and 100G leased capacity services (DCS1-21-004 …).
• Completed 34 Call off Contracts with Infinera for hardware, software and deployment services (Call off Contracts 16/17/21/22/23/24/25). Five Change Control Notices (CCNs) were also completed during the period primarily for modifications to previously signed Call Off Contracts
• Signed 1 new connectivity contracts for dark fibre, spectrum connectivity and 100G/200G leased managed wavelength services (1 commercial contracts. 1 NREN contracts & 0 NREN MoU).
• Managed to continue constant build activities despite extended hardware lead times from Infinera (for the GÉANT GN4-3N build) and other OLS Providers such as Nokia, ADVA, Ribbon and EKINOPS (to support delivery of contracted commercial & NREN spectrum services).
• Completed new route build and testing activities for remaining procured routes consisting of dark fibre, spectrum routes and 100G managed wavelength services.
• Issued all remaining cease notices for existing connectivity contracts (being replaced by new GN4-3N infrastructure).
• Secured an annual Opex saving of over €1.1 million by migrating from the old infrastructure to new GN4-3N infrastructure.
• Integrated 36x dark fibre, 17x spectrum, 13x wavelength and 3x metro fibre routes into the full GÉANT production network.
• Reviewed and approved 25 Infinera acceptance documents related to new route deployment and acceptance activities.
• Reviewed and signed 25 Letters of Acceptance (LOAs) from Infinera covering new route build, migration support work and decommissioning activities.
A number of ongoing activities helped to ensure project progress and completion, including:
• Constant dialogue with commercial providers and NRENs to fine-tune and further improve the proposed new network design in terms of costs and technical solution. The final regional enhancement routes being investigated rely on funding being available from the network build budget, taking into account costs to build the Reference Network that has been agreed with NIAC.
• Detailed review of financial reports and budget allocations to support the level of financial project tracking required.
• Detailed implementation planning is being completed on an ongoing basis now that Infinera have been awarded the OLS contract to build the new GN4-3N network.
• Internal bi-weekly project review meetings have been held to track progress and issues from design through to procurement. The GN4-3N project team hold regular progress review meetings with these suppliers.
