SUBCO has revealed plans to deliver a new diverse landing for its 9,800km Oman Australia Cable (OAC) by extending a branch to Salalah (Oman). As part of the company’s plans, approximately 1,200km of cable is to be laid from OAC’s branching unit to the new interconnection hub of Salalah, adding a new diverse path from the existing cable which lands in Muscat (Oman). Once completed, the new branch will interconnect with several new hyperscale cable systems that link Salalah to Europe and Africa – including 2Africa, India-Europe Express (IEX) and the combined Blue and Raman* systems. SUBCO is currently in the project planning phase, with the branch landing anticipated to be completed and operational by the end of 2024. Bevan Slattery, founder and CEO of SUBCO said: ‘I am incredibly excited to be sharing our plans to build OAC’s diverse landing in Salalah, which will enable a new low latency route from Australia to Europe. With a number of other major subsea cable systems interconnecting, or planning to interconnect, at Salalah, we hope to provide our customers with an express gateway for onward capacity from Australia to EMEA, and enable enhanced network performance, connectivity and resiliency for all of Australia.’
Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), a consortium of Asian telecommunications carriers managing the ASE cable system, is working with Ciena to improve the design capacity and sustainability of its cable system. Spanning a total of 8,148km, the ASE cable system connects Japan to Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. Via Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme, leveraging Waveserver 5 powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme and an optical bypass, system design capacity of the ASE will increase by 193%.
Cinturion Corp has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) agreement with Alliance Networks to be its landing partner in Bahrain. The Cinturion-backed Trans Europe Asia System (TEAS) , which will include submarine and terrestrial sections, is comprised of two separate connections across the Mediterranean Sea, continuing with two paths interconnecting the Middle East with multiple routes across the Arabian Peninsula, and a route through the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea. Adel Al Daylami, CEO of Alliance Networks, said: ‘The strategic partnership with Centurion will link and position Bahrain and the region to the multiple layers of infrastructure diversity, which include establishing new subsea landing stations and crossing routes that will cater for the rising regional demand for international capacities.’ Alliance Networks, which has been awarded an international telecoms services licence by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), currently offers diverse fibre connectivity between Bahrain and other Gulf countries, using its position as a carrier-neutral hub.
The India Asia Xpress (IAX) submarine cable system has landed in Mumbai (India). The IAX, which is expected to be ready for service (RFS) by the end of 2023, will connect Hulhumale in the Maldives directly with Mumbai and Singapore, with additional branches to five countries, including Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. It is part of a system comprising two main cables: the IAX and the India Europe Xpress (IEX). For its part, the IEX cable will stretch from India to the Middle East and Europe (via a landing in Savona, Italy).
EXA Infrastructure has partnered with Colt Technology Services (Colt) on a new robust digital ecosystem in the Channel Tunnel linking the growing data centre markets in London (UK) and Paris (France). EXA will upgrade 66km of submarine network with 288 fibres of the G.652D optical cable which will benefit new and existing customers. Steve Roberts, VP Network Investments at EXA Infrastructure, said: ‘This is an important industry collaboration to meet the growing digital demand we are seeing across Europe and beyond. The Channel Tunnel forms a key part of EXA’s strategy to provide our clients with a choice three scalable and fully diverse dark routes between the UK and Europe.’
Progress is being made on the government-sponsored Norte Conectado Program, which is aiming to bring connectivity to the Amazon region through the deployment of a sub-fluvial fibre-optic backbone network composed of eight stretches (called ‘Infovias’) along rivers in the Amazon basin. Gired, which was formed to oversee broad digitisation and which is part of regulator Anatel, has formally approved the completion of Infovia 01. The 1,100km route connects Santarem (Para state) and Manaus (Amazonas), with branches to Obidos (Para), Juruti (Para), Curua (Para), Parintins (Amazonas), Urucurituba (Amazonas) and Itacoatiara (Amazonas), as well as to Oriximina (Para), Terra Santa (Para) and Autazes (Amazonas). The cables for the Infovia 01 section were manufactured by Hengtong. The infrastructure – comprising the sub-fluvial cable and the anchorage boxes in the stretches’ eleven localities, the modular datacentres that interconnect to the cable anchor boxes, and the respective optical transmission systems – will now be handed to the telecoms ministry.
Infinera has announced a record-breaking achievement of delivering a 400Gbps single-wavelength transmission with Infinera’s ICE-X 400G QSFP-DD intelligent coherent pluggable solution across 2,400km of Corning’s TXF optical fibre. The transmission distance achieved in this trial is twice the previous record. The demonstration featured Infinera’s ICE-X 400G intelligent coherent pluggable solution hosted in UfiSpace’s 400G disaggregated core and edge routers across 2,400km of Corning’s TXF fibre – an ultra-low-loss, silica-core fibre with large effective area.
The Open XR Forum has announced the successful demonstration of long-haul point-to-point transmission between QSFP56-DD coherent transceivers over 1,400km at 400Gbps using 16QAM modulation, as well as error-free performance at 300Gbps using 8QAM modulation over a span of 2,495km. The testing was conducted in conjunction with founding member Lumen Technologies using Infinera’s ICE-XR 400G QSFP56-DD transceivers operating in third-party routers and transmitting over third-party line systems.
Lastly, Sipartech has highlighted the availability of 400G+ spectrum and wavelength offers across its network, at the same time as deploying new long-haul routes in Europe. The Sipartech long-haul network is designed with a three-way topology that interconnects its metropolitan dark fibre networks; each route lands in a separate data centre, with several possibilities for further extensions to a wide portfolio of data centres. Currently, a total of 214 data centres can be activated with 400G+, growing to around 350 data centres in Europe as indicated in the Sipartech 2023-2025 roadmap.
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