The route was not named but the details given suggest it is likely to be the Unity Cable System owned by Pacnet, Google, Global Transit, SingTel, KDDI and Bharti Airtel.
Alcatel will upgrade the system to deliver multi-terabit capability in order to cope with growing data traffic brought about by smartphones, tablets, video applications and enterprise cloud adoption.
The first phase of the upgrade will see the capacity of the system increased by 1Tbps with the final phase seeing an ultimate capacity of up to 4Tbps per fibre pair. This is a significant upgrade from the original ultimate capacity of 960Gbps per fibre pair.
Alcatel said that the upgrade would expand the overall capabilities of trans-Pacific communications infrastructures and benefit from a time-to-market advantage, improved performance and better scalability.
Research by TeleGeography suggests that trans-Pacific data capacity demand will increase at a CAGR of 36% between now and 2018.
“Carriers, service providers, multimedia and content providers are all expanding their networks to support internet and data centre applications, while protecting their existing investments. Alcatel-Lucent’s unique submarine solution delivers ease of upgrade and scalability to multi-terabit capacity, offering a staged migration combining technological and economic benefits. This upgrade will allow quicker service turn-up to meet customers’ expectations for anywhere, anytime access to broadband applications, storage and computing,” said Philippe Dumont, president of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks.
