Aqua Comms, Telia Carrier, and Ciena completed a trial of 400GbE services between New York and Frankfurt.
The trial follows the announcement that Aqua Comms upgraded its two transatlantic submarine cable routes with Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution, which leverages WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optical technology. Aqua Comms provided the Trans-Atlantic capacity and 400GbE service from New York to London with Telia Carrier providing the ongoing terrestrial service from London to Frankfurt demonstrating that their traffic can be passed on seamlessly across their respective transmission networks and utilized on Telia Carrier’s IP Backbone (AS1299) with active 400G interfaces routing on both continents.
Aqua Comms’ Chief Commercial Officer, Chris Bayly commented: “The trial is an exciting new initiative for Aqua Comms and Telia Carrier as we continue to respond to the growing demand for critical infrastructure services. The alliance with Telia Carrier and Ciena allows us to deliver a truly innovative solution that we believe will deliver efficiencies to our carrier, cloud and content clients as they strive to support the hyper growth traffic between the US and Europe.”
Telia Carrier’s Vice President, Sales, Ivo Pascucci said: “Staying ahead of our customers' ever-increasing connectivity needs is paramount for us. This 400G pan-continental trial on a production network is all about ensuring the flexibility at all layers of the network, and especially in the underlying high-capacity transport infrastructure required for delivering the best high-performance connectivity for our customers in the US and Europe and for their end-users.”
Aqua Comms has upgraded its two Trans-Atlantic submarine cable routes with Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution.
Aqua Comms owns two major subsea networks: AEC-1 that connects the US, Ireland, the UK, and AEC-2, which connects North America with Scandinavia, Ireland and the UK. With Ciena, the AEC-1 path, that spans 5,521 km and connects New York to Ireland and the UK, has been completely modernized and upgraded to support 400GbE services leveraging Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e), doubling the cable’s capacity to almost 20 Tbps.
Aqua Comms is also utilizing Ciena’s technology to enhance the 7,650 km AEC-2 network to support up to 500G Trans-Atlantic channel rates and the introduction of spectrum sharing and backhaul capabilities for its customers.
Ciena said both upgrades were successfully completed with the networks in-service. The upgrade will also provide Aqua Comms with access to Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller that offers a more sophisticated management and control capability, translating into significant operating efficiencies. Aqua Comms is also adopting Ciena Insights Service and predictive software capabilities to help resolve network issues.
“Aqua Comms has proven to be a trail blazer in the subsea market,” said Ian Clarke, Vice President of Global Submarine Solutions, Ciena. “With these network enhancements Aqua Comms can offer greater efficiencies and reliability across its network and support the hyper-growth traffic between the US and Europe.”
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...
