Hibernia Atlantic to construct new submarine cable connecting Iceland to North America and Europe

Hibernia Atlantic has announced a plan to construct a new submarine fibre-optic cable system connecting Iceland to its northern Atlantic submarine cable system. Hibernia Atlantic will deploy a branching unit off its existing northern cable, giving Iceland direct connectivity to North America, Ireland, London, Amsterdam and the rest of continental Europe. The new cable link will provide connectivity to Iceland at 192×10Gbps Ethernet wavelengths, the only one of its kind in the region. This allows for communications traffic from Iceland to go either east or west, with direct access to 42 cities and 52 network points of presence (PoPs) and the ability to steer traffic around major metropolitan areas and bypass traditional backhaul routes. Hibernia Atlantic projects the system will become fully operational for customer traffic in the autumn of 2008.