Calgary-based AltaLink is Canada’s only fully independent transmission company operating approximately 12,000 km of transmission lines that serve 85 percent of Alberta’s population. In 2010, Altalink launched an IP/MPLS upgrade to its entire distribution and communications infrastructure. Altalink expands communication AltaLink’s decision to upgrade its operational communications network was originally triggered by the obsolescence of the ATM and TDM solutions, according to Clint Struth, AltaLink’s Principal Engineer for Telecommunications and Networking. There are other factors though which bolstered the case for change.“We also had a need for more IP-based services and, because our division is practically an internal service provider to the various business units that use the network, we had decided that we wanted to implement a carrier-like model with centralized management and provisioning,” says Struth.

Other challenges included greater regulatory requirements, placing more emphasis on AltaLink’s ability to provision, manage and operate critical services while reporting actual operating statistics, and the necessity to adhere to reliability benchmarks for Teleprotection (TPR), SCADA, or other services. Additionally, the company needed to maintain the services running on its legacy network and ensure cybersecurity during the transition. “Contrasting the competitor offerings for IP/MPLS, Alcatel-Lucent is the only company that has a broad suite of those legacy interfaces,” says Struth, so when you’re trying to bridge the gap between old network and new, the others simply can’t do it.”