Southern Cross to use Ciena GeoMesh Extreme on NEXT submarine cable system

Feb. 8, 2021
Scheduled for completion early next year, the NEXT submarine cable will add a third geographically diverse route to Southern Cross’s Pacific undersea network ecosystem.

Submarine networks operator Southern Cross Cable Ltd. will use elements of Ciena’s (NYSE: CIEN) GeoMesh Extreme submarine technology portfolio on the new 13,494-km Southern Cross NEXT submarine cable system, according to the communications technology provider. Ciena will provide its 6500 submarine line terminating equipment (SLTE), which leverages the company’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics engine.

Scheduled for completion early next year, the NEXT submarine cable will add a third geographically diverse route to Southern Cross’s Pacific undersea network ecosystem leveraging four fiber pairs (see “Construction of Southern Cross NEXT submarine cable set to begin”) to enable more than 72 Tbps of capacity. The submarine cable system will land at Hermosa Beach, CA, on the U.S. side; from there it will connect to the company’s data center locations in Los Angeles (Equinix LA1 and CoreSite LA1) and Silicon Valley (Equinix SV1, Equinix SV8, and CoreSite SV1). To the west, the NEXT cable will land at Coogee Beach in Sydney, Australia, and Takapuna Beach in Auckland, New Zealand. It also will provide connections to Fiji, Tokelau, and Kiribati.

Like other submarine networks in the Southern Cross ecosystem, NEXT will use GeoMesh Extreme SLTEs. The infrastructure also will benefit from Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) software platform for network planning and operational management of services; the Insights Service for network analysis; and Blue Planet Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) for service flexibility.

“Today’s work from home mandates and the sudden dramatic influx of remote digital requirements have generated major traffic spikes and required our customers to deliver increased capacity in extremely short time frames, a trend we expect to see for years to come,” said Mr. Laurie Miller, president and CEO of Southern Cross Cables. “In seeking the optimal solution for our NEXT system, we engaged an external global consultancy to independently review and evaluate the various leading industry solutions and after a thorough process, the Ciena WaveLogic 5 Extreme was identified as the ideal choice.”

As mentioned, Southern Cross has a long history of using Ciena’s equipment in its submarine networks (see, for example, “Southern Cross Cables upgrades submarine network with Ciena GeoMesh Extreme,“Southern Cross to add 1-Tbps submarine network capacity,” and “Southern Cross submarine fiber network jumps to 100G”).

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About the Author

Stephen Hardy | Editorial Director and Associate Publisher, Lightwave

Stephen Hardy is editorial director and associate publisher of Lightwave and Broadband Technology Report, part of the Lighting & Technology Group at Endeavor Business Media. Stephen is responsible for establishing and executing editorial strategy across the both brands’ websites, email newsletters, events, and other information products. He has covered the fiber-optics space for more than 20 years, and communications and technology for more than 35 years. During his tenure, Lightwave has received awards from Folio: and the American Society of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) for editorial excellence. Prior to joining Lightwave in 1997, Stephen worked for Telecommunications magazine and the Journal of Electronic Defense.

Stephen has moderated panels at numerous events, including the Optica Executive Forum, ECOC, and SCTE Cable-Tec Expo. He also is program director for the Lightwave Innovation Reviews and the Diamond Technology Reviews.

He has written numerous articles in all aspects of optical communications and fiber-optic networks, including fiber to the home (FTTH), PON, optical components, DWDM, fiber cables, packet optical transport, optical transceivers, lasers, fiber optic testing, and more.

You can connect with Stephen on LinkedIn as well as Twitter.

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