Nokia and Orange France complete first worldwide live service provider network tomography trial, supporting AI-ready infrastructure

Trial gives near real time visibility into conditions across Orange France’s live optical transport network showing how AI-ready automation can help operators gain more accurate insights into the health and performance of their optical networks.

Nokia today announced the successful completion of a live trial of network tomography with Orange France, demonstrating how advanced optical network intelligence can help operators better understand, manage and optimize their transport networks to prepare for the growing demands of AI-driven services.

Network tomography works like a health scan for optical networks. It gives operators a clearer view of what is happening across fiber links and wavelengths, without the need to install intrusive probes throughout the network. Powered by Nokia Bell Labs innovative algorithms, the solution imports and processes thousands of pieces of data sourced from coherent optical transmissions to gain near real-time insight into the condition of the overall network link by link.

The trial helped identify issues such as fiber degradation, amplifier problems, configuration errors and other network conditions that could affect performance. By spotting these issues early, operators can validate their underlying network faster and take action before the customers SLAs are impacted.

The trial also showed how network tomography can help operators make better use of their existing network capacity. By understanding the real condition of each optical link more accurately, operators can optimize performance, improve spectral efficiency and support more resilient services. This is an important step toward more automated optical networks, including AI-assisted operations and closed-loop automation.

The solution also utilizes equipment already installed in the network, avoiding the need for field force interventions and significantly reducing its environmental impact.

"As network performance requirements become more stringent, operators need deeper visibility into the performance and condition of their transport infrastructures. With this successful trial, Orange is taking an important step toward the future of network operations. By using smart automation technology, we can better optimize the network and deliver more resilient services to our customers."  
     -- Christian Gacon, Vice President, Broadband Networks at Orange France 

"For many years, operators have had to rely on point measurements and manual investigations to understand what is happening inside their optical networks. This trial is an important milestone because it gives operators near-real-time visibility across optical links, helping them detect degradation, configuration issues and performance problems much earlier. Network tomography brings a new level of observability to optical infrastructure, helping operators simplify operations, make better use of existing network assets and prepare for the shift toward AI-native networks."
     --Guil Yazdi, VP, Client Executive, Orange at Nokia