With the demand for bandwidth heedless of stock market fluctuations, two undersea carriers announced the completion of undersea links that promise to see plenty of traffic.
Viatel made the most significant announcement, heralding the installation and activation of its "Yellow Submarine" transatlantic system. The 3,700-mi fiber-optic cable network links the company's European networks, including its cross-border and metropolitan fiber-optic networks, to its North American network and facilities.
Yellow Submarine features 320 Gbits of initial capacity, with the potential to reach a minimum of 1.28 Tbits. Viatel claims the network provides more capacity than any transoceanic cable ever built.
Viatel�s Yellow Submarine is actually one of four tenants on the cable. Level 3 managed construction of the cable (which it calls Project Yellow). Viatel and Level 3 each took a 25 percent stake in the cable, leaving Global Crossing Ltd. with a 50 percent ownership stake (which it refers to as AC-2).
Meanwhile, Pangea Ltd. completed on November 26th the 48-fiber, repeaterless Baltic Sea submarine segment of the Pangea Network -- the 11,500-km (7,145-mi) fiber-optic cable system serving Northern Europe, Scandinavia, and the Baltic region.
The Pangea Network will link Stockholm, Tallinn, and Helsinki. Pangea also will offer service in Estonia."
The 600-km (373-mile) Baltic submarine segment connects Helsinki, Tallinn, Hiiumaa, Sandhamn, and Stockholm Solna via Ljustero. The system has been designed to provide an initial capacity of 8x10 Gbits/sec per fiber pair connecting POPs in Stockholm, Tallinn, and Helsinki -- upgradeable to 32x10 Gbit/s per fiber pair.
Pangea Ltd. has completed two other submarine cable segments of the Pangea Network this year -- a repeatered system between the U.K. and Denmark and an unrepeatered system from Amsterdam to Lowestoft in the U.K.
The fully funded Pangea Network is configured as self-healing submarine and terrestrial rings with an initial capacity of 160 Gbits/sec. Countries on the network include the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia, as well as direct access to the U.S. The Pangea Network will be ready for service by year-end.