TE Subcom starts construction of Hibernia Express transatlantic cable
TE SubCom, a subsidiary of TE Connectivity (NYSE: TEL), says it has started to build the new Hibernia Express submarine cable system.
The 4,600-km cable will provide the lowest-latency fiber-optic path between New York and London, Hibernia asserts (see "Hibernia Atlantic plans low-latency transatlantic submarine cable from New York to London"). The submarine network will connect Halifax, Nova Scotia and Brean, UK, with terrestrial fiber to extend connectivity to the major metro areas in each country.
The project was originally awarded to Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (see "Huawei Marine to build Hibernia Altantic’s Project Express"), but later suspended over concerns about the Chinese vendor’s status in the US market (see "U.S. House Intelligence Committee sees Huawei and ZTE as security threats"). TE SubCom took over the project build last year.
Hibernia Express will initially launch with 100-Gbps optical transmission capacity using TE SubCom’s C100 SLTE platform. It will be a six-fiber-pair undersea cable, with a portion of the fibers optimized for lowest latency and a portion optimized for 100x100-Gbps design capacity. The total cross-sectional design capacity of the cable will be over 53 Tbps.
“Having a unique, low-latency route combined with increased capacity allows Hibernia Express to offer unmatched services to trans-Atlantic connectivity customers,” said Bjarni Thorvardarson of Hibernia Networks. “As a pillar of the submarine cable industry, we are confident that TE SubCom will deliver a highly advanced cable system and world-class implementation. We’re thrilled to have reached this critical point in the deployment of Hibernia Express.”
“Our company’s technology portfolio and extensive trans-Atlantic installation experience make us an ideal supplier for the Hibernia Express system,” said John Mitchell, President, TE Subcom. “We’re looking forward to tackling the special challenges of this unique project and supplying the newest high capacity, low latency cable across the Atlantic.”
The Hibernia Express submarine cable has a target in-service date of summer 2015.
For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.