C&W Networks upgrades submarine networks to 100 Gbps via Xtera

Service provider C&W Networks, part of Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC), has tapped Xtera Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: XCOM) to provide the necessary optical transmission technology to upgrade several of its Caribbean submarine networks to support 100-Gbps wavelengths.

C&W Networks offers services across the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, and United States. It operates undersea cable networks that stretch more than 48,000 miles. The upgrade has seen the operator enhance several unrepeatered and repeatered segments to 100 Gbps using Xtera's Nu-Wave Optima multi-purpose optical networking platform.

The upgraded submarine cable systems include the 1,570-km Gemini - Bermuda cable system, the 1,700-km Caribbean - US (CBUS) system, the 1,700-km East West Cable (EWC) system, the 1,440-km festoon Eastern Caribbean Fiber System (ECFS), and part of the 8,700-km ARCOS-1 submarine ring.

"The global build-out of data centers, coupled with rapid deployment of cloud-based services, are driving renewed demand for even higher fixed and burst-rate connections with emphasis on high availability through redundancy," said Paul Scott, president of C&W Networks. "Our goal is to proactively prepare our networks with the right technology to efficiently address the evolving business needs of today and the future. We are very excited to enhance our network performance to100G and 100G+ and Xtera was a natural choice for us."

Xtera says it supplied the same optical networking platform for both the unrepeatered and repeatered segments. The optical transport systems vendor says that it was able to raise the capacity of the unrepeatered segments to multiple terabits per second, even on the longest segments, which approach 400-km spans. Xtera adds that its Raman-based approach enabled C&W Networks to bypass some intermediate sites when no local add/drop of 100G waves was needed.

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.