The Asia-Africa-Europe-1 Consortium (AAE-1) has upgraded the AAE-1 submarine network, doubling its capacity. Infinera (NASDAQ: INFN) says it supplied the necessary technology, with the fourth generation of its Infinite Capacity Engine (ICE4) and Instant Bandwidth capabilities at the heart.
AAE1 connects East Asia to Europe via Egypt. The complete system combines 25,000 km of submarine and terrestrial fiber networks. The subsea and terrestrial links connect Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, with Malaysia and Singapore, then extends onward to Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and France (see “Asia-Africa-Europe-1 Consortium launches commercial services on AAE-1 submarine cable system”). It had an original design capacity of 40 Tbps on five fiber pairs and was backed by a consortium that included China Unicom, CIL (HyalRoute), Djibouti Telecom, Etisalat, GT5L, Mobily, Omantel, Ooredoo, OTEG, PCCW, PTCL, Reliance Jio, Retelit, Telecom Egypt, TeleYemen, TOT, Viettel, VNPT, and VTC. It became ready for service in 2017.
Infinera was not part of the original deployment but was brought aboard for this most recent upgrade. “AAE-1 is an important subsea cable asset for carriers globally, with bandwidth needs growing rapidly, particularly during this very difficult and deeply sad global crisis. After a rigorous evaluation, we selected Infinera for its superior reach, optical transmission performance, and reliability,” explained Loucas Balis, chairman of the AAE-1 Management Committee.
“When selecting a solution for AAE-1, it was critical to select a vendor with a seamless scalable solution for the entire network, with great economics,” added Giuseppe Sini, vice chairman of the AAE-1 Management Committee added. “Infinera gave AAE-1 the ability to activate capacity quickly and really differentiate our services. Infinera has been an excellent choice.”
Infinera has seen success applying its ICE4 as part of submarine network upgrades (see, for example, “Telstra applies Infinera ICE4 coherent transmission capabilities to Asia Pacific submarine networks” and “OTEGLOBE deploys Infinera ICE4 coherent transmission technology”). “By deploying Infinera’s subsea solution, AAE-1 is set up for success now and into the future, with pioneering technology to tackle next-generation services, including Instant Bandwidth functionality that enables unlocking additional network capacity through remote activation,” stated Nick Walden, senior vice president, worldwide sales at Infinera.
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