Once complete, the 13,700km cable will have landing points in Australia, Samoa. Kiribati, the US, Tokelau, Fiji and New Zealand. A consortium of Spark New Zealand, Singtel Optus, Verizon and Telstra is building the system.
Announced by ASN CEO, Philippe Piron in a LinkedIn post he we quoted as saying:
“Alcatel Submarine Networks {ASN] is very pleased to launch the construction of Southern Cross NEXT, a new chapter after building the original Southern Cross dual cable network twenty years ago. The partnership we developed with Southern Cross all along these years in the Pacific is one of the most successful we ever had with a strategic customer.”
ASN was named as cable vendor of the new system back April of this year with the signing of a supply contract between Southern Cross and ASN. The deal will see ASN deliver a system with 72Tbps of capacity adding to the existing 20Tbps capacity available on the current Southern Cross systems.
Using ASN’s state-of-the-art subsea technology, the solution is designed to provide enhanced reliability and network efficiency, as well as providing the lowest latency connection between major data centres in Sydney or Auckland and Los Angeles. The solution includes ASN’s submarine WSS ROADM units, the latest generation of repeaters and will offer high performance and powering resilience, enabling over 72Tbps transmission capacity.
The Open Cable system is also designed to be compatible with future generations of submarine line terminal equipped with Probabilistic Shaping technology.
“A number of critical milestones have already been achieved prior to contract signing, with the Marine Survey completed in 2017, the completion of the Sydney BMH and bore landing facilities in 2018, along with landing arrangements in Los Angeles, and Auckland. These milestones and the efforts of the SX and ASN teams have us on track to target completion of the system in the second half of 2021,” said Laurie Miller, president and CEO of Southern Cross Cables, at the time.
