Aqua Comms has accelerated its investment in its submarine cabling platform by lighting a new fiber pair on its AEC-1 system. Owned and operated by Aqua Comms, AEC-1 is Ireland’s first dedicated subsea fiber network interconnecting New York, Dublin, and London.
The new fiber pair has been brought into service to address the growing bandwidth demands of Aqua Comms’ customers as requirements to rapidly, seamlessly, and reliably move vast quantities of data continue to increase.
One of the critical elements that the provider advocates is its dedication to sustainability, focusing on increasing supply while minimizing power requirements to push for Trans-Atlantic capacity solutions.
“Through new technology, we will be able to generate more capacity per fiber pair, leading to better performance on power draw per Tb, and therefore a significantly more sustainable system,” said Nick Barton, CEO of AquaComms. “The system will also reduce regen requirements at our different cable landing stations and simplify backhauls to create a greener path.”
The system uses Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) coherent optics.
In the coming months, Aqua Comms will begin deploying Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme, a 1.6 Tbps coherent optical solution. WL6e is estimated to result in a more than 50% reduction in energy consumption per bit compared to the first fiber pair.
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Sean Buckley
Sean is responsible for establishing and executing the editorial strategies of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report across their websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products.