Windstream Wholesale Successfully Completes Industry’s First 400G ZR+ Interoperability Trials

Demonstrates interoperability of II-VI and Acacia modules using open standards

Windstream Wholesale, a leading provider of advanced optical solutions, announced today that it has successfully tested the interoperability of QSFP-DD form factor ZR+ pluggable modules from II-VI Incorporated (NASDAQ: II-VI) and Acacia, now part of Cisco. The tests established 400 Gigabit links in a production environment over a 1,027-kilometer link. The team also leveraged the Marvell® Deneb™ Coherent DSP within a native 0 dBm II-VI pluggable and the Acacia module using the Greylock DSP. Industry standard oFEC algorithms were also used in the trials.

“These successful trials demonstrate that Windstream Wholesale remains the optical technology leader in making 400G wavelengths the default deployment for large wholesale and hyperscale customers,” said Buddy Bayer, president of Enterprise and Wholesale at Windstream. “Interoperability is key to simplifying high-performance networks in a cost and energy-efficient manner, and no other service provider has done more than Windstream toward making it a reality in the marketplace. This significant achievement validates Windstream’s strategy of open, disaggregated optical networking.”

Windstream also announced it has become the first service provider member of the OpenZR+ MSA. “We see the OpenZR+ community as well-positioned to make progress around standardization and interoperability in the high-performance transceiver arena,” said Art Nichols, vice president of network architecture and technology at Windstream. “Our goal is not simply to take advantage of our interop and optimization learnings internally, but to also contribute to the industry as a whole in driving open networking forward.”

“We would like to thank Windstream for their industry leadership in driving the technology and hosting the multivendor interoperability trials,” said Matthias Berger, vice president, coherent technology, II-VI Incorporated. “The success of these trials validates the level of maturity of the 400G ZR+ ecosystem which is essential to enable open systems and network architectures such as IP-over-DWDM.”

“As one of the founding members of the OpenZR+ MSA, we are excited to see the industry embracing interoperability and moving towards open networking architectures,” said Tom Williams, senior director of marketing for Acacia, now part of Cisco, and co-chair of the OpenZR+ MSA. “Interoperability and the introduction of new modules, such as our recently announced Bright 400ZR+ QSFP-DD pluggable, will be key to accelerating the adoption of router-based optics in transport networks.”

“We are truly excited to see the first successful validation of multi-vendor DSP interoperability for 400G OpenZR+,” said Samuel Liu, senior director of product marketing, Marvell. “The Marvell Deneb Coherent DSP has enabled a large open ecosystem of suppliers to drive rapid adoption of OpenZR+ in carrier and cloud networks.”

Windstream’s Intelligent Converged Optical Network provides open and disaggregated networking infrastructure, enabling wholesale and enterprise technology customers to select unique custom routes, maintain operational insights with Windstream’s Network Intelligence functions, and place their networks closer to the edge to better serve end-users.

About Windstream

Windstream Holdings is a privately held Fortune® 1000 communications and software company. Windstream Wholesale is an innovative optical technology leader that creates deep partnerships with carriers, content and media providers, and federal government agencies to deliver fast and flexible, customized wave and transport solutions. Additional information is available at windstream.com or windstreamwholesale.com. Follow us on Twitter at @Windstream.

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