Aqua Comms AEC-1 fiber pair highlights its sustainability efforts
Aqua Comms has accelerated its investment in its submarine cabling platform by lighting a new fiber pair on its AEC-1 system. Owned and operated by Aqua Comms, AEC-1 is Ireland’s first dedicated subsea fiber network interconnecting New York, Dublin, and London.
The new fiber pair has been brought into service to address the growing bandwidth demands of Aqua Comms’ customers as requirements to rapidly, seamlessly, and reliably move vast quantities of data continue to increase.
One of the critical elements that the provider advocates is its dedication to sustainability, focusing on increasing supply while minimizing power requirements to push for Trans-Atlantic capacity solutions.
“Through new technology, we will be able to generate more capacity per fiber pair, leading to better performance on power draw per Tb, and therefore a significantly more sustainable system,” said Nick Barton, CEO of AquaComms. “The system will also reduce regen requirements at our different cable landing stations and simplify backhauls to create a greener path.”
The system uses Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) coherent optics.
In the coming months, Aqua Comms will begin deploying Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme, a 1.6 Tbps coherent optical solution. WL6e is estimated to result in a more than 50% reduction in energy consumption per bit compared to the first fiber pair.
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About the Author
Sean BuckleySean Buckley
Sean is the Editor-in-Chief of Lightwave. He establishes and executes Lightwave's editorial strategy across its website, email newsletters, events, and other information products. Before coming to Lightwave in July 2023, he served as editor of Broadband Communities. Earlier, he served as senior editor of FierceTelecom and the editor of the former Telecommunications Magazine. He got his start in the optical industry in 1998 when he became the editor of enterprise and optical networks at Information Gatekeepers. He has a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and lives in Dracut, Mass, with his wife, two sons, and his cat, Dove.
