A Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., is getting into the undersea cabling business.
Global Marine Systems Ltd. and Huawei announced today they signed a memorandum of understanding to form Huawei Submarine Networks Ltd., which would provide submarine network equipment and related service.
The companies plan to launch Huawei Submarine next year.
Chelmsford, England-based Global Marine operates cable ships and subsea vehicles and maintains undersea cables. It already has agreements with China Telecom and Japan’s NTT.
Based on the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, Huawei manufactures telecommunications and networking equipment for enterprises and carriers, including high-speed packet access (HSPA) mobile gear, routers and Ethernet switches.
The companies signed an agreement in March, launching their submarine terminal equipment and network protection equipment – which, according to Global Marine, supports 1.28 terabits per second per fibre pair. The equipment includes a repeater designed to protect it from damage caused by fishing.