Aqua Comms has increased the capacity on its AEC-1 and AEC-2 America Europe Connect transatlantic submarine cables in collaboration with Ciena (NYSE: CIEN), the communications technology provider has revealed. Ciena has supplied its GeoMesh Extreme submarine network technologies for the upgrades, which also enable improved network management capabilities.
AEC-1 links the U.S., Ireland, and the UK (see "AquaComms taps Ciena for AEConnect transatlantic submarine cable system"). Ciena says that Aqua Comms has doubled the capacity of the 5,521-km submarine cable and enabled the support of 400 Gigabit Ethernet services via application of Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) coherent engine. AEC-1 now has a system capacity of nearly 20 Tbps.
For the 7650-km AEC-2 submarine network, the use of the Ciena GeoMesh Extreme portfolio has enabled support of channel rates up to 500G as well as the use of spectrum sharing and backhaul capabilities. AEC-2 connects North America with Scandinavia, Ireland, and the UK (see "Transatlantic AEC-2 submarine cable system is now live").
Both upgrades were performed in-service, Ciena says. Aqua Comms also has adopted Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller for network management and control as well as Ciena’s Insights Service and predictive software capabilities to help resolve network issues.
“Moving at high speed is key and Ciena’s strong history of innovation has been instrumental in our ability to adapt to changing network requirements. With Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution we are not only boosting our submarine network capacity but also adopting AI capabilities and software intelligence, bringing greater velocity and simplicity to our network,” said Andy Hudson, chief networks officer at Aqua Comms.
“Aqua Comms has proven to be a trail blazer in the subsea market,” added Ian Clarke, vice president of global submarine solutions at 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.”
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