At the SubOptic tradeshow in Yokohama Japan today Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU, news, filings) and Apollo Submarine Cable System, which is jointly owned by both Alcatel-Lucent and with Cable & Wireless, demonstrated transatlantic speeds totalling 3Tbps. The feat utilized 72 40Gbps wavelengths on Apollo’s northern cable, crossing some 6221 kilometers. That nearly quadruples the original design capacity, and would double the capacity available on a live system from today’s 10Gbps implementations.
The Alcatel-Lucent 1620 Light Manager submarine line terminal used a phase shift keying (PSK)-based modulation format with next-generation coherent detection. The success marks another step toward commercial transatlantic native 40G deployments.
Coupled with today’s Xtera/Global Crossing news and last week’s Infinera deployment, we can see a definite pattern in the Atlantic. More electronics for existing cables, and equipment makers are jockeying for position for the contracts to upgrade them – the flurry of PRs is not likely to be coincidental.
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Categories: Telecom Equipment · Undersea cables
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Hi,
72 working 40G waves for a demo? Do you really believe that? That accounts in the best case for 144 transponders, which in a fortunate case at 40kEuro / transponder –> more than 5M Euro invested in a demo. I doubt Alcatel-Lucent has (actually I know they don’t have) 144 transponders on stock just to give them for a demo.
Rubbish PR