Over in Europe, Colt has plans for a new fiber route under the English Channel that doesn’t involve getting wet. They have signed a 25-year contract with Getlink for the rights to pull new fiber through the Channel Tunnel between England and France.
The Channel Tunnel was originally completed in 1994, and stretches 50 or so kilometers while passing as deep as 250 feet below the sea bed. It has had fiber through it already of course, but it was installed back in 1998 and the existing contracts are expiring. Colt’s upgrade will increase its capacity to modern levels of Terabits per second per fiber pair as they integrate the route into their IQ Network and commercialize the asset.
Colt will be paying €185m over that time period, with 1/3 of it over the first 5 years. Getlink will be responsible for maintenance within the tunnel itself. It was not mentioned who held these contracts before, so if anybody knows those details leave a comment below – I’m curious.
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Categories: Fiber optic cable · Internet Backbones
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The contract was with Interoute since 2003 (http://www.m2.com/m2/web/story.php/2000390F0D675F33FCAB802569AD0058F7EB).