Aqua Comms activated AEC-2 (America Europe Connect-2), the company’s second Trans-Atlantic subsea cable system and complementing its existing AEC-1 (America Europe Connect-1) cable, which went Ready for Service in 2016.
AEC-2 connects New Jersey, U.S.A to Denmark, and is a wholly diverse and resilient new Trans-Atlantic subsea route, doubling fibre connectivity between North America and Denmark making it the first new subsea system directly linking North America to Denmark and the Nordic region in twenty years. AEC-2 leaves North America from NJFX, a carrier-neutral cable landing station and Tier 3 colocation facility in New Jersey, providing the option to bypass New York City and a route that offers complete diversity from existing Trans-Atlantic cables.
AEC-2 offers wavelength services ranging from 10G, 100G and 400G. It was designed for complete redundancy and diversity to support key data centre connectivity routes across the North Atlantic. These include connecting key US locations such as Ashburn, VA and 165 Halsey Street in New Jersey to Copenhagen in Denmark and the wider Nordic region as well as critical existing locations throughout Europe including Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Hamburg.
“As part of Aqua Comms’ expansion in the North Atlantic and across the globe, we are delighted to launch our second Trans-Atlantic cable, AEC-2, providing a new and diverse route that supports the critical data centre markets in the US and Northern Europe,” comments Nigel Bayliff, Chief Executive Officer of Aqua Comms. “Data traffic continues to grow exponentially and we are looking forward to delivering industry-leading services to our customers over this new cable system.”
AEC-2 forms part of the North Atlantic Loop, that along with two new cables planned to go RFS in early 2021, will form a resilient, ring-based subsea infrastructure link between the East Coast of the United States, Ireland, the UK and the Nordics.
Aqua Comm's AEC-2 subsea cable to tie into Interxion Copenhagen
Aqua Comms will interconnect its America Europe Connect-2 (AEC-2) subsea cable system at Interxion’s data center in Copenhagen.
AEC-2 is Aqua Comms’s portion of the Havfrue subsea cable project, connecting New Jersey, U.S.A., to Ireland, and Denmark. The America Europe Connect-2 cable is scheduled to land in Blaabjerg, near Esbjerg in September 2019 and will be the first new cable connecting Denmark to the U.S. in nearly two decades.
Aqua Comms supplies fiber pairs, spectrum and capacity networking solutions to the global media, content and carrier markets.
“The large number of networks and content platforms present at Interxion’s Copenhagen campus makes it an efficient location for AEC-2 to interconnect with our target customers,” said Nigel Bayliff, CEO of Aqua Comms. “The investment Interxion is making to develop its campus in Copenhagen aligns with the growth in demand we are seeing for highly resilient network capacity between northern Europe and the U.S”.
AEC-2 will complement Aqua Comms’ existing transatlantic cable, AEC-1, and deliver on its vision of creating a “North Atlantic Loop”, a resilient dual-path network across the Atlantic. This will be further enhanced by North Sea Connect (NSC) from Denmark to the UK and Celtix-Connect-2 (CC-2) as a second Irish Sea cable crossing from the UK to Ireland, both of which will follow shortly after AEC-2.
“The AEC-1 subsea cable already extends to the Interxion facility in Dublin, so we are pleased to expand our collaboration with Aqua Comms on this new cable into Denmark,” said Peder Bank, Managing Director of Interxion, Nordics. “Our community of customers greatly value international capacity on diverse, modern and resilient routes which is exactly what the ring topology of the North Atlantic Loop provides. The system further strengthens Interxion’s position as the main Gateway to the Nordic Region”.
AEC-2 is scheduled to go live in the fourth quarter of 2019 and will more than double fiber connectivity to Denmark from the US, increasing the diversity and reliability of the Internet to the region. Aqua Comms investment in subsea cables to northern Europe complements Interxion’s increased investments in its Nordic data centers in Copenhagen and Stockholm.
HAVFRUE subsea cable to link NJ and Denmark with 108 Tbps capacity
The HAVFRU system will be owned and operated by multiple parties, including Aqua Comms, Bulk Infrastructure, Facebook, and others. Aqua Comms, the Irish cable owner/operator and carriers’ carrier, will serve as the system operator and landing party in U.S.A., Ireland, and Denmark. Bulk Infrastructure of Norway will be the owner and landing party for the Norwegian branch options.
The HAFVRUE subsea cable system will be optimized for coherent transmission and will offer a cross-sectional cable capacity of 108Tbps, scalable to higher capacities utilizing future generation SLTE technology. SubCom will incorporate their Wavelength Selective Switching Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexer (WSS-ROADM) for flexible wavelength allocation over the system design life. It is the first new cable system in almost two decades that will traverse the North Atlantic to connect mainland Northern Europe to the U.S.A.
HAVFRUE is the Danish word for mermaid.
Preparation work is underway and system ready-for-service (RFS) is expected in Q4 2019.
“The HAVFRUE cable will provide state-of-the-art connectivity for increasing needs of users, ranging from individual consumers to businesses and the research community. SubCom is proud to be selected as the supplier for this project,” said Sanjay Chowbey, president of TE SubCom.
