Hibernia Networks upgrades terrestrial fiber-optic networks in Northeast US

Hibernia Networks, perhaps best known for offering transatlantic fiber-optic network services, says it has completed an upgrade of its U.S. terrestrial footprint that includes six new long-haul fiber routes in the Northeast United States. The new routes include two between Ashburn, VA, and New York, plus single routes from Chicago to New York, New York to Buffalo, New York to Albany, and New York to Boston.

The infrastructure extension was a multi-year effort designed to reduce latency and increase route diversity, Hibernia says. In particular, Hibernia can now offer two completely diverse paths from Ashburn to Hibernia's landing sites in Boston and Halifax, Nova Scotia, with comparable latency; provide more direct routes between New York and Toronto and between Chicago and New York; and additional diversity through Albany, NY.

The new fiber cable routes leverage 6500 Packet-Optical Platforms from Ciena Corp. (NYSE: CIEN) to support data rates of 100 Gbps and, eventually, beyond. Ciena also has supplied equipment for Hibernia's submarine cable network (see "Hibernia Networks upgrades trans-Atlantic cable with Ciena").

"This is part of our overall evolution to introduce diversity and better latency performance throughout our entire network. We have had support from our customers and our partners like Ciena throughout this project and it was made possible through continuous and increasing demand for capacity in the region," said David Smith, senior vice president, global network operations at Hibernia. "The resulting technology refresh across our Northeast network assets reflects our long-term commitment to bringing the most advanced and highest capacity technologies to the market aggressively."

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