Aqua Comms Limited (Aqua Comms), a business of a TE Connectivity, Ltd., has completed the final splice of its America Europe Connect (AEConnect) subsea fiber optic cable system, completing the marine segment for the system, which was scheduled to be ready for service at the end of January 2016.
AEConnect, which spans more than 5,536 km across the Atlantic, has strategically placed stubbed branching units to facilitate future extensions of the system. “The system provides secure, low latency, high capacity connectivity from New York to Dublin, London and beyond to greater Europe,” it said. Envisioned to revolutionize connectivity between North America, the United Kingdom and Europe, Aqua Comms‘ AEConnect is one of the first subsea cables constructed between New York City and London in nearly 15 years. Featuring the latest technology of 130 Gbps x 100 Gbps per fiber pair, it is specifically designed to meet the growing bandwidth requirements demands of global data centers, carriers, cloud-based networks, financial services market participants and content providers. With more than 52 Tbps of available capacity, the 100G-compliant system will utilize innovative optical technologies to provide the most advanced subsea system, combined with a control plane based on a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology to serve bandwidth-intensive applications.
“With the final splice of the subsea portion of AEConnect complete, we stand on the cusp of providing unprecedented transatlantic capacity and reliability connecting New York to London and beyond to greater Europe,” said Aqua Comms CFO Martin Roche. “While commemorating this major milestone event, I would like to point out the exceptional service provided by our partner, TE SubCom, whose expertise, contingency planning and cable laying operations, which they delivered within an aggressively condensed timeframe, made this extraordinarily complex undertaking a resounding success.”
