CtrlS Builds 100Tb/s Metro Optical Networks in 5 Indian Cities

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 28, Indian data center operator CtrlS Datacenters announced that it will adopt Ciena's optical networking technology to build five metro optical networks in Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, New Delhi, and Noida, connecting nine data centers, with an overall transmission capacity of up to 100Tb/s. The project is part of the Managed Optical Fiber Network (MOFN) that CtrlS is building for a large hyperscale cloud service provider, primarily addressing the demand for high-bandwidth cross-campus connectivity driven by the continued growth of AI, cloud computing, and high-density data center services.

The network build uses Ciena's WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) coherent optical technology and deploys the Waveserver platform and the 6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS). Waveserver is used for high-capacity data center interconnection, while the 6500 RLS handles reconfigurable optical layer transmission, enhancing the carrying capacity of metro fiber resources through higher spectral efficiency and flexible wavelength scheduling. The Ciena Services team will also be responsible for end-to-end project management, covering network design, equipment deployment, and system integration.

At the network operations level, CtrlS will also adopt the Ciena Navigator Network Control Suite to provide unified control and automated management of optical network resources. The system can be used for service activation, network resource orchestration, performance monitoring, and capacity scheduling, reducing manual configuration work when adding links and adjusting bandwidth between multiple data centers, enabling CtrlS to deliver data center interconnection services to cloud service providers and large enterprises more quickly.

This build covers five major digital infrastructure markets in India, among which Hyderabad and Chennai have already formed large-scale data center clusters, while New Delhi–Noida is an important data center and cloud service node in North India. After the five metro networks connect nine data centers, they will establish high-capacity optical transmission channels within the same city and between different data center campuses, providing underlying network connectivity for GPU clusters, cloud platforms, data backup, and large-scale AI workloads.

CtrlS currently operates 19 data centers in nine major markets in India, with total operating capacity exceeding 370MW, while approximately 4.4GW of data center projects are in various stages of construction and development. As AI computing facilities and hyperscale data centers continue to expand, data transmission demand between facilities is shifting from traditional enterprise-grade interconnection to 100G, 400G, and higher-grade optical network connections. This 100Tb/s metro network will form supporting transmission capacity in sync with CtrlS's subsequent AI-ready and hyperscale data center expansions.

CtrlS's previous data center expansion efforts focused mainly on facility capacity, power, and AI infrastructure. With the addition of the five-city optical network, its business chain has further extended to dedicated fiber connectivity between data centers. For hyperscale cloud customers, such MOFN networks can organize multiple data center nodes into a unified pool of computing and storage resources, enabling different campuses to handle AI training data synchronization, distributed storage, disaster recovery backup, and cross-regional cloud service traffic.