Telecoms operator Orange has announced it is to collaborate with Telxius to offer co-location services for Google’s Dunant cable project, the 6,600km trans-Atlantic cable that will connect the US and west-coast France from late 2020.
The two firms will provide and operate mutual terrestrial backhaul extensions at their respective Cable Landing Stations in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, France, and Virginia Beach in the US.
From Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez Orange will enable terrestrial connection to Telxius up to Paris, while Telxius will connect Orange to Ashburn from Virginia Beach. Following the deal, Orange and Telxius, part of the Telefonica Group, will effectively provide multi-terabit capacity on the Europe-US route.
Orange, which was appointed to this project in 2018, described both locations as “strategic” to the network, due to their close proximity to main connectivity hubs on both sides of the Atlantic. To date, the operator has invested in more than 40 submarine cables.
According to Jerome Barré, CEO of Orange wholesale and international networks, the deal will benefit customers by providing “very high capacity” end-to-end services, as well as network redundancy on the busy trans-Atlantic route.
“We will be operating two fibre pairs of over 30 terabits per second between France and the USA. It is a valuable extension to Orange’s global network joining our Atlantic and Mediterranean routes to Africa, the Middle East and Asia with guaranteed best in class quality of service,” said Barré.
The Atlantic is already one of the world's busiest network routes and Google’s Dunant cable is intended to address the rapidly growing data and content demands that exist between Europe and the U.S. When announced in 2018, Dunant was Google's first private, trans-Atlantic sub-sea cable.
Telxius CEO, Mario Martín, said: “This agreement confirms our commitment to provide the best services to our partners and customers, offering the latest technology, diverse routes and best latency. We are pleased to join forces with Orange on this new route which in combination with our existing MAREA system puts Telxius in an excellent position in the strategic Europe – US route.”
