There have been interesting developments in the submarine cable marketplace lately:
Reliance Globalcom is using Ciena gear to add 40G capabilities to the cable linking the UK, Spain, Italy, and Egypt. That would be the former FLAG cable, 6,400km of fiber that lies between Reliance Globalcom’s Atlantic and Asian systems. The upgrade gives them a future 100G upgrade path as well. Reliance is said to shop the FLAG assets last year, I wonder if they’re still on the market…
Tyco’s TE Subcom division is about to deploy a transpacific 40Gbps link exceeding 9,500km in length. They didn’t, however, mention just which transpacific system is being upgraded. I think it’s a safe bet that it’s one of the US-Japan systems, and one of those has a big backer who has been ramping up their capacity. And that brings us to our next item.
The transpacific bandwidth used by NTT Communications (NYSE:NTT, news, filings) for its global IP network now exceeds 400Gbps up from 300Gbps in less than a year according to a company PR. NTT purchased the PC-1 cable a while back, and has not been shy about using it since. Given that it also has latency advantages for the NY-Tokyo route, I suspect they just may be the one TE Subcom is putting in that 40Gbps for – though I suppose it could be the US-Japan system too.
European-based Nexans will be supplying fiber to Huawei for a Mediterranean cable system that I hadn’t come across before. The 440km Libya Sylphium system will connect Libya directly with Greece, adding diversity to the North African country’s internet access. The cable will handle up to 1.2Tbps, though I can’t imagine there being that much traffic that needs to go between Tripoli and Athens.
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Categories: Undersea cables
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I don’t know, -but it seems unlikely that PC-1 will be the recipient of the upgrade from Tyco, previously they had replaced all the SLTE plant with Fujitsu equipment and I can’t imagine NTT (a) swapping out essentially new SLTE when it hasn’t hit its design threshold or (b) awarding such a contract to a non-Japanese company. It would be better perhaps to look at trans-Pac systems which were built or lit by Tyco.
this is really remarkable news.
just 15 years ago one of the sections I taught during a four day fiber class covered undersea cable and at the time the repeaters max throughput was 1G, and they were $1M each, placed about 40 clicks apart.
does it cost less to abandon cable and lay new, or replace each repeater?