The $300 million project had been on hiatus since February 2013, when Capacity broke the news that it had become embroiled in mounting tensions between the US and China over cybersecurity.
The vendor contract for the cable has since switched from Huawei Marine – a UK subsidiary of Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei – to US-based TE SubCom.
TE SubCom announced yesterday that it had commenced work on the 4,600km cable, which aims to provide the lowest-latency route between New York and London, connecting Halifax, Nova Scotia and Brean, UK. It will also offer terrestrial fibre connectivity to major metro areas.
The project was originally due to be completed in the first quarter of 2014, but now has a target in-service date of mid-2015.
The six-fibre-pair 100G cable will utilise TE SubCom’s C100 SLTE platform, and the total cross-sectional design capacity of the cable is expected to be over 53Tbps.
“Having a unique, low-latency route combined with increased capacity allows Hibernia Express to offer unmatched services to transatlantic connectivity customers,” said Bjarni Thorvardarson of Hibernia Networks.
“As a pillar of the submarine cable industry, we are confident that TE SubCom will deliver a highly advanced cable system and world-class implementation. We’re thrilled to have reached this critical point in the deployment of Hibernia Express.”
