AAE-1 is a 25,000km submarine communications cable that runs from Southeast Asia to Europe and has a capacity of 40 terabits per second.
It was launched in 2011 by China Telecom and Telecom Egypt and involved a consortium of over 17 carriers including British Telecom, Etisalat and Omantel.
By upgrading the cable using the ICE6 technology, the cable will benefit from the highest level of spectral efficiency on the market and increase the lifespan of the cable according to Rob Shore, senior vice president of marketing at Infinera.
Speaking to Capacity at ITW 2022, Shore said that the lifespan of a cable would typically be around 20 years old but with new technology like ICE6, this can be extended with “5-10 years of new services”.
“ICE6 is designed to both minimise cost by enabling carriers to transmit the most amount of information over the greatest distances with the least amount of hardware,” he says.
“For right now there are a lot of network operators that can see the value by adopting this generation of coherent technology, either by providing more services or lowering the overall cost of services.”
Alongside increasing spectral efficiency, ICE6 also offers the ability to upgrade its line system to allow L-band transponders on some of its terrestrial network segments.
Infinera has been making headlines beyond subsea in recent times. The company was responsible for improving GlobalConnect Carrier’s speed to 800Gbps on its international backbone between the Swedish cities of Stockholm and Malmö.
