Ciena to upgrade Japan-US Cable trans-Pacific network with 100G/FibreCo Telecommunications uses Corning fiber in open access network

Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN) says the Japan-US Cable consortium is upgrading its trans-Pacific submarine network, which spans nearly 23,000 km between the US and Japan, with Ciena’s Wavelogic 3 coherent 100G technology.

Expected to be in service in early 2013, the upgraded network will bring 5 Tbps of additional capacity to a crucial global network route connecting North America and northern Asia. As the first direct coast-to-coast 100G trans-Pacific submarine network, this will allow Japan-U.S. Cable customers to enjoy the benefits of increased bandwidth and support rapidly increasing capacity demands.

[UPDATED] The Japan-US Cable is made up of more than 35 consortium members, including global service providers such as Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, KDDI, NTT, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, and Softbank Telecom.

The Japan-US Cable Network includes two landing stations in California, one in Hawaii, and three in Japan. To provide the 100G service, Ciena’s 6500 packet-optical platform with WaveLogic 3 coherent optical processors will replace existing 10G optical equipment at each landing station.

Ciena says its WaveLogic coherent technology enables unobtrusive 40G/100G upgrades to existing submarine networks with only the addition of new terminal equipment, significantly extending the life of existing cable plants and further lengthening its lifespan. As well as scaling bandwidth and lowering costs, WaveLogic-powered networks can be programmed to respond and adapt to changing requirements for capacity, reach, and latency.

“Previously, equipment and service companies who installed and maintained these cables were the sole source for submarine landing terminal equipment hardware,” said Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst for optical, Infonetics Research. “But now vendors such as Ciena, who have made large investments in advanced coherent technology for a wide range of carrier applications, are disrupting the economics of the submarine networking industry. With their packet-optical technology, they can retrofit existing plants, increasing capacity and extending the life of submarine carriers’ large capital investments. In return, submarine carriers get access to advanced technology and can elicit true competitive bids for networking hardware.”

Ciena says it has now shipped over 14,000 coherent 40G/100G line interfaces shipped to more than 100 customer deployments over land and undersea across the globe, including deployments in eight countries across the Asia Pacific region.

Corning Inc. (NYSE: GLW) reveals that South African open-access network provider FibreCo Telecommunications is deploying Corning optical fiber in a new high-speed, long-distance fiber-optic network in South Africa.

Construction of the FibreCo network began in April, and the first link is expected to be completed in 2013. The cable contains both Corning SMF-28e+ LL and LEAF fibers. Phase 1 of the roll out includes a 2,000-km link between Johannesburg and Cape Town that also connects Bloemfontein, East London, and Port Elizabeth. The project’s total distance will cover 12,000 km.

ZTE received the contract for the construction of FibreCo’s network and supply of equipment.

“We are excited to utilize Corning optical fiber for our project,” said Arif Hussain, FibreCo CEO. “Many submarine optical cables now connect South Africa to the rest of the world, and a significant increase in terrestrial fiber capacity supply is required. Our network will provide the necessary high-speed capacity in South Africa as well as the ability for our customers to easily upgrade their networks to higher data rates without the need to re-install fiber.”

This is the first deployment of SMF-28e+ LL fiber in South Africa. SMF-28e+ LL is designed to offer low attenuation values and low polarization mode dispersion (PMD) with ITU G.652.D-compliant performance for longer spans and reach. Also, SMF-28e+ LL fiber enables more repair margin, Corning asserts. LEAF, meanwhile, is the most widely deployed, non-zero dispersion shifted fiber in the world, the company says. It also has lowest attenuation and largest effective area of any ITU-T G.655-compatible optical fiber, Corning claims.