Spans 9,620km in length, Unity creates a direct cable route linking Japan and the US and through this upgrade to Infinera’s ICE6 solution, the cable doubles its capacity and gives operators the 'highest capacity services at the lowest cost per bit'.
The Unity cable is backed by a consortium comprised of Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, a subsidiary of TIME, Google, KDDI Corp, Telstra and Singtel.
“Infinera’s innovative ICE6 technology was selected to upgrade our system because it enables us to extend the life of the Unity Submarine Cable System while providing the highest level of quality for our customers,” said the Unity consortium.
“The Unity Submarine Cable System is a critical connection between two continents with the fastest growing bandwidth needs. We needed an industry-leading solution that would enable us to be competitive now and in the future.”
In addition, by upgrading the network to ICE6, the consortium will be able to increase the life span of the cable by nearly 25% and deliver up to 7.4 Tbps, per fibre pair.
At the same time, Infinera’s ICE6-powered GX Series solution also enables operators to get the most out of the subsea cable by minimising cost per bit while maximising the spectral efficiency and fibre capacity, leveraging features that include Nyquist subcarriers, forward error correction gain sharing, and photonic integrated circuit-based technology.
“The Unity Submarine Cable System is one of the highest capacity underwater fibre optic cables ever built between Asia and North America, and Infinera is proud to power it with our latest optical engine technology,” said Nick Walden, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Infinera.
“The increased capacity will help operators in Asia and the US meet the increasing bandwidth demands on both sides of the Pacific.”
