From around 1998 onwards, an increasing number of organisations, operators and joint ventures were building vast pan-European networks. The drivers for such growth were relatively straightforward: European deregulation had opened up hitherto inaccessible markets and prices for high-bandwidth network technologies were becoming cost effective, as demand for high-bandwidth services increased. In such conditions the business case for the rapid deployment of large-scale optical dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) networks across Europe was irresistible. At its height, Europe boasted in excess of 25 such networks, at varying degrees of development and scale.
All these new network operators had something in common. They were all effectively building new networks on a greenfield basis, and were developing the teams and tools to build and manage their networks almost from scratch. One such operator was BT's pan-European network deployment, then known as Farland and now called Transborder Pan-European Network (TPEN).
Established on the lines of a start-up, the Farland team's blueprint was based on small interactive units that could work quickly and efficiently in order to build the network they needed, unrestricted by legacy equipment. In order to capture the market most effectively, Farland rolled out the first 10 Gbit/s pan-European network in May 1999. The network started out thinly spread in order to capture the majority of initial demands. It then quickly grew to increase its coverage in new areas and to reinforce coverage in existing areas that would allow it to meet the...
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