The Asia-Africa-Europe-1 (AAE-1) Consortium has launched commercial services on the 25,000-km AAE-1 submarine cable system, which links Europe to the Far East. AAE-1 is the longest submarine system in over a decade, according to the consortium. The submarine cable offers a capacity of at least 40 Tbps across five fiber pairs. As bandwidth demands grow, future upgrades are possible.

With express routes and the minimum number of hops between Points of Presence (PoPs) in Europe and Asia, AAE-1 offers significant protection and diversity to previously vulnerable and heavily congested routes, the consortium asserts. The submarine cable system combines terrestrial and subsea routes to offer connections between Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, with Malaysia and Singapore, then on to Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and France. TE Subcom installed the majority of the undersea cable segments, while Xtera supplied systems for the terrestrial fiber cable segments (see "E Subcom awarded AAE-1 submarine cable system" and "AAE-1 Consortium opts for Xtera optical transport for terrestrial segments").

The AAE-1 cable system is the first undersea cable system to connect all major Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and European regions, the consortium says. It offers a low latency fiber-optic route with terminations in Asia (Telecom House Hong Kong and Equinix/Global Switch Singapore) and Europe (Greece, Italy, and France InterXion MRS1 and MRS2, Marseille).

AAE-1 consortium members include 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.

For related articles, visit the Network Design Topic Center.

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.