GlobeNet Completes NJ-Bermuda Upgrade

GlobeNet, the international submarine capacity arm of Brazil’s Oi, announced the completion of its buildout between Tuckerton, NJ and St.David’s Bermuda. The 1,350km cable system will take over duties for Segment 5 of the company’s ring connecting the east coast of the US to key points in South America.

GlobeNet and TE Subcom began the replacement cable just over 15 months ago after finishing a marine route survey in late 2011. The original cable dates back to 1997, and was the oldest part of GlobeNet’s submarine cable system.  That meant it would be a limiting factor in meeting the demands of rapid traffic growth to and from South America.

With the upgrade, they’ll have more than 30 times as much potential capacity available to them. The new cable will be powered by TE Subcom’s SLTE gear and will support 150 wavelengths of 100Gbps for each of its two fiber pairs, for some 30Tbps of theoretical capacity.

That will be more than enough to go with their recent upgrade of the other parts of their submarine network to 40G with 100G in the wings, which promises something like 12Tbps in theoretical capacity.  Both numbers are surely enough to keep their inventory full for quite some time given current traffic levels, for which last autumn GlobeNet said they had 1.2Tbps lit at the time.

GlobeNet has also been working on a new leg to Colombia, which was also targeted for sometime this year.  I wonder how that project has been progressing.

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Categories: Undersea cables