Cisco will power Colt Technology Services' transition to 400 Gb/s optics. The London-based service provider today announced plans to deploy Cisco’s Silicon One switching and routing portfolio including the vendor’s Acacia 400ZR pluggable optics and segment routing MPLS software.

“We know the requirement for ultra-high bandwidth services is increasing. With Cisco’s technology in specific layers of our network, we’ll have a scalable and efficient packet core network that fulfills the connectivity demands of our customers across the globe,” Vivek Guar, VP of network engineering at Colt, said in a statement.

During the last 18 months, Cisco has cemented itself as an optical leader through the development of its Silicon One routing and switching portfolio and the $4.5 billion acquisition of optical networking vendor Acacia earlier this year.

Colt will deploy a combination of Cisco’s Silicon One switches and Acacia pluggable optics to effectively quadruple the bandwidth of its IQ Network, which currently connects more than 9,000 data centers and 29,000 buildings across Europe, Asia, and North America.

Most of these connections will be made across long-haul, inter-metro spans in excess of 200 kilometers.

Colt claims the partnership will help the company address the growing demand for high-bandwidth services when the upgraded network comes online in September.

The lion's share of optical growth during the first quarter of 2021 originated in Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EMEA), and Latin America, according to a recent Dell’Oro Group report.

The Caribbean and Latin America grew 15% year over year during the quarter, while EMEA was up 10% during the same period. However, flat growth in the Asia Pacific region and a 15% year-over-year decline in North America held market growth stagnant, the report found.

Things do, however, appear to be on the mend, according to Dell’Oro VP Jimmy Yu.

“Although the North American region was down this quarter compared to last year, it did improve from last quarter,” he wrote in a research note. “In fact, the growth quarter over quarter was really strong. It grew just over 15%, and we think this strength will carry forward through the remainder of the year.”