Cork Hops On the Hibernia Express

This morning Hibernia Networks is supplying an update on the new transatlantic cable it has been building, and adding a new landing station to it as well. The Express cable will now have a branch come ashore in southwestern Ireland, bringing direct connectivity to both the UK and the US to the city of Cork.

While Hibernia’s attention a few years back was on the northern part of Ireland with Project Kelvin, this is the second announcement they’ve had relating to the southern city of Cork this year. In July they added a PoP in the Cork Internet Exchange, and business there must be quite good if they’re going to land Express as well.

Meanwhile TE Subcom, which is currently manufacturing the cable prior to having the ship sent out to actually install the system, says that 90% of the lightweight cable and 65% of the armored cable is complete. That still puts the project on target come online this summer. When interviewed Hibernia’s Bjarni Thoravaradson this past summer, he said they’d start laying the cable itself in the Spring of 2015.

Hibernia’s Express project is expected to cut latency between New York and London below 60ms, although that does get folks less excited now than it would have a few years ago. But perhaps more critical, it will be the first transatlantic cable system to get built in over a decade. Of all the aspects of the telecom nuclear winter that followed the dot-com implosion, the transatlantic submarine cable business has take the longest to return to full normalcy.

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Categories: Undersea cables