Southern Cross is looking to leverage Ciena's WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) technology to enable 800 Gb/s wavelengths across the single 12,500+km span of its Southern Cross (SX) cable from Sydney to Los Angeles.
Ciena says its WL6e, which operates at 200GBaud, supports 1.6 Tb/s single-carrier wavelengths for metro networks, 800 Gb/s services across the longest links, a 50% reduction in watts per bit, and requires less space compared to the previous generation for similar capacities.
“We have a long-standing history with Ciena, and their strong history of innovation and deep understanding of our business needs have continued to be instrumental to our success. SX NEXT cable is a high-performance system and the first phase of the replacement of the original systems by 2030. Today, we’re once again announcing what is expected to be another networking world first, implementing Ciena WaveLogic 6 on SX NEXT to help us push the envelope in terms of high-speed bandwidth connectivity and energy efficiency,” said Laurie Miller, President and CEO, Southern Cross.
“The Southern Cross NEXT cable is key to the transpacific cable ecosystem, contributing to improved network performance across the Pacific region – all on top of Ciena GeoMesh Extreme technology. Southern Cross has always looked to Ciena for the latest innovations to gain a competitive advantage. With this upgrade to WL6, Southern Cross will be able to provide customers with unrivalled connectivity, allowing them to enjoy applications and services of up to 800GbE,” said Dino DiPerna, Senior Vice President, Global Research and Development, Ciena.
