SYDNEY – The amount of data pouring underneath the Pacific Ocean just got faster with the completion of an upgrade to Pacific Crossing Ltd.’s cable, bringing the capacity up to 1 Terabit per second.
Pacific Crossing, which runs the carrier-neutral PC-1 cable, worked with Fujitsu to become the first company to operate a Terabit of lit capacity across the ocean.
The company said completion of a systems-wide upgrade brings online an additional 600G bps of trans-Pacific capacity to its system, bringing its total trans-Pacific lit capacity to just over the 1Tbps threshold.
The new core network upgrade, powered by Fujitsu’s Submarine Line Terminal Equipment (SLTE) represents a re-engineering of PC-1’s transmission and traffic management layers, extending PCL’s maximum capacity by more than three-fold while facilitating the future deployment of advanced network interfaces and service options.
The six-month contract was completed without any disruption to existing network traffic, according to Mark Simpson, the chief executive officer of PCL.
“The completion of our network upgrade not only represents a new platform for our services, but also signifies the completion of PCL’s re-engineering as a company,” he said. “It clearly shows our ability to execute and that we’re back in business after our financial and corporate restructuring, and ready to deliver services to our customers.”
The new Fujitsu equipment replaces the previous PC-1 system, which had a design capacity cap of 640G bps, with a new platform that boosts the design capacity to at least 3T bps.
The new core platform also supports advanced networking features such as Ethernet and beyond networking interfaces as well as advanced wavelength-level access.
Capacity on PC-1 is available to customers in bandwidth increments ranging from STM-1 to 10G waves with flexible fully-protected and unprotected subscription options.
Dr. Terumi Chikama, vice-president of Fujitsu submarine networks, said the company’s SLTE enables PCL to support dramatically higher bandwidth requirements while maintaining its industry leading performance across the Pacific.
“The growing popularity of high-bandwidth Internet applications such as video and other forms of multimedia, interactive services, are driving bandwidth consumption on a global scale, and in particular, across the Pacific due to the growing economic importance of Asia,” Simpson said.
As part of the core network upgrade, Pacific Crossing has also put in place extensive dark backhaul between its cable landing stations in Western Australia and California. Together with its existing backhaul facilities in Japan, PCL now offers city-to-city connectivity across the Pacific.
The PC-1 Trans-Pacific System is 21,000 km in length and boasts DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) with lit capacity of 1.78T bps.
