Mark Stevens, Nortel Australia and New Zealand president, said the main advantages of the CPL platform are rapid time-to-market and cost-effective deployment on a large scale so carriers can extend their networks quickly to deliver more services at a lower cost.

"The CPL fundamentally changes the way optical networks transmit information by reducing the number of amplifiers needed for long-range, high bandwidth transmissions," Stevens said. "This makes it particularly suited to sparsely populated, expansive regions like Australia, where getting high bandwidth services to regional areas can be cost-prohibitive."

Nortel is providing network integration and maintenance services for Silk Telecom's optical network from its global services business.