Telecom Lead America: Alcatel-Lucent is upgrading 9,600km trans-Pacific digital submarine cable system using coherent technology.
The first phase of the upgrade will increase the system capacity by 1 Terabit/s.
The cable, owned by 5 major carriers, provides connectivity from the Japanese east coast to California.
The telecom equipment major said the upgrade will deliver multi-terabit capability to address the data traffic driven by smartphones and tablets, as well as the increase in video applications and the shift of enterprise activities to the cloud.
According to TeleGeography, the amount of trans-Pacific used capacity will increase at a compound annual rate of 36 percent between now and 2018.
With the system originally designed for an ultimate capacity of 960 Gigabits-per-second (Gbit/s) per fiber pair, the upgrade will quadruple its original design capacity by use of Alcatel-Lucent’s advanced coherent technology, delivering an ultimate capacity of up to 4 Terabits per second (Tbit/s) per fiber pair which is equivalent to approximately 500,000 HDTV channels simultaneously broadcasting a live major sporting event.
Alcatel-Lucent’s submarine solution delivers ease of upgrade and scalability to multi-terabit capacity, offering a staged migration combining technological and economic benefits.
“This upgrade will allow quicker service turn-upto meet customers’ expectations for anywhere, anytime access to broadband applications, storage and computing,” said Philippe Dumont, president of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks.
The Alcatel-Lucent solution is based on the 1620 Light Manager submarine line terminal equipment using coherent technology at 40G, expandable to 100G. The upgrade solution will be managed by the Alcatel-Lucent 1350 optical management system.
