Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme uses Ciena’s 6500 Submarine Line Terminating Equipment (SLTE) powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics for the new 13,494km system in the Pacific.
This deployment will allow Southern Cross meet the growing demand for bandwidth and support the resiliency, reconfigurability, and rapid activation requirements of its customers.
“Today’s work from home mandates and the sudden dramatic influx of remote digital requirements have generated major traffic spikes and required our customers to deliver increased capacity in extremely short time frames, a trend we expect to see for years to come,” said Laurie Miller, president and CEO, Southern Cross Cables Limited.
“In seeking the optimal solution for our NEXT system, we engaged an external global consultancy to independently review and evaluate the various leading industry solutions and after a thorough process, the Ciena WaveLogic 5 Extreme was identified as the ideal choice.”
Specifically, the NEXT system will use Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme to mesh the new system into the current Southern Cross network footprint, while at the same time supporting higher connectivity services and a fully integrated eco-system.
This ecosystem is made up of three diverse subsea cable routes, 20+ access points, and over 43,000km, it also supports high capacity and low latency routes between Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tokelau, Kiribati, Hawaii and the US West Coast.
“By rolling out Ciena for NEXT, Southern Cross is proactively tackling the unprecedented appetite for bandwidth and ensuring record-breaking capacity over longer distances,” said Matt Vesperman, managing director for Ciena Australia and New Zealand.
“Enabling this exciting new opportunity proves our technology prowess, delivery model and performance can be trusted.”
Due for completion in early 2022, the NEXT cable will use the Ciena GeoMesh Extreme solution as part of the overall Southern Cross network fabric to seamlessly integrate the multiple terabits of traffic across the network.
In addition, it will enable customers to manage, control and plan (MCP) for network planning and operational management of services; use of the insights service to optimise network analysis; Blue Planet Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) to support and enhance service flexibility, all at lowering power requirements per bit.
