RailTel has completed an upgrade of its National Long-Distance (NLD) and metro optical transport networks through a collaboration with Nokia, to strengthen its backbone infrastructure to support rising demand for high-speed, resilient connectivity across India.
The modernization includes enhancements to RailTel’s dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) network along with the deployment of Carrier-Grade NAT (CG-NAT) and metro optical transport solutions nationwide. Nokia executed the upgrade in partnership with its authorized ecosystem partners.
The project leverages Nokia’s 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) platform and advanced transponder technology, significantly expanding RailTel’s transport capacity while reducing cost per bit. The upgrade integrates unused channel spectrum and existing optical assets to introduce high-capacity Lambda transmission and express traffic lanes between cities, improving throughput and latency across the nationwide network.
In line with RailTel’s strategy to diversify vendors and protect long-term investments, the collaboration emphasizes a vendor-neutral, open-network architecture. This approach is expected to foster technology innovation and make future upgrades easier to integrate across RailTel’s extensive optical footprint.
Nokia has also deployed its 7750 Service Router (SR), which incorporates Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) and CG-NAT capabilities. The unified IP routing architecture will allow RailTel to support growing enterprise traffic, enhance intercity resiliency and meet increasing bandwidth requirements from both enterprise and broadband customers.
“Through the integration of Nokia’s advanced technologies with our existing infrastructure, we are positioned to achieve exceptional efficiency. These enhancements will enable us to deliver superior, faster, and more reliable services to our enterprise and broadband customers across India,” said Sanjai Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director at RailTel.
“At a time where demand for high-speed, resilient network services is constantly increasing, RailTel has put its trust in Nokia to ensure its critical network modernization project is successful. We have unmatched credentials in supporting open network architectures which integrate into any customer ecosystem, and the use of our latest set of IP routers and optical transponders will help RailTel to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency,” said Prashant Malkani, Head of India Sales for Network Infrastructure at Nokia.
The upgrade positions RailTel to support a wide range of enterprise and national connectivity requirements, reinforcing its role as a key provider of mission-critical network infrastructure across India.
