Recently, the 16th Huawei User Group Meeting (HUGM) was successfully concluded in Istanbul, Türkiye. The meeting's theme, "Listening, Collaborating, Improving, Developing", aimed to bring global carriers together in a collaborative effort.
During the meeting, Huawei optical product line held a Mindshare session on "Improving Quality with Intelligence and Ushering in a New Era of F5.5G Premium Operation". Alessandro Bono, the Manager of Backbone Operation from Fastweb Italy, delivered a speech entitled "Building a High Reliable 400G+ Optical Network with Quality Operation", sharing Fastweb's innovative practices in network design and operation.
The traffic from Northern Europe to the Southern Hemisphere grew rapidly in recent years, resulting in the increasing requirement of network capacity. It is a good solution to transfer the service through Italy for a growing number of international carriers. As a leading wholesale service provider in Italy, Fastweb needs an innovative network architecture and O&M process to improve network operation efficiency.
Fastweb has partnered with Huawei to simplify the network architecture by deploying a high-performance, flexible national 400G optical network. The ‘Meshed’ and elastic network is adopted for better service availability. In order to address the issue of frequent fiber cuts in Italy, ASON technologies with diverse protection policies are deployed to enhance service quality with over 99.99% availability. Furthermore, Fastweb has enabled the SLA assurance capability through the intelligent monitoring dashboard and digital processes, especially service monitoring for top customers. It provides real-time awareness of network data, which is available for network monitoring, one-click display of service status, and proactive risk identification and optimization. Besides, the NOC can monitor real-time top service performance indicators on one screen, helping to identify potential service risks in advance, and resolve problems before customers issue complaints.
By utilizing these innovative technologies, Fastweb has greatly improved their network availability. In 2023, a 48-hour fire in Sicily, Italy, caused several interruptions, affecting 2.4 Tbit/s of services. However, the high-reliability ASON network and proactive O&M helped to rerouted 1.8 Tbit/s of services, protecting the commitment and trust between Fastweb and customers.
Alessandro Bono stated that Fastweb will continue to strengthen the capability of quality operation and explore technology innovations, such as AI for Network. With the continuous improvement of network quality and intelligence, Fastweb will be able to provide the best service experience in the era of premium operation.