The new route crosses the Atlantic Ocean, connecting France with the United States. It offers an alternative method of connectivity across the ocean, which is one of the busiest routes in the world.
The Amitie cable is over 6,800km long and with 16 fibre pairs has a capacity of 400 Tbps. This makes it the highest capacity transoceanic communications cable ever deployed. Orange will use 2 of the fibre pairs.
Work completed on the cable in July this year. Amitie will connect Lynn (near to Boston in the US) with Bordeaux in France and Bude in England.
Edge USA, a subsidiary of Meta, is the landing party for the Lynn landing, and Meta is also an 80% shareholder in the project. In addition to Orange, who manage the Bordeaux landing and own the parts of the cable 12 nautical miles (22.2km) from the coast of France, Vodafone manage the Bude landing station.
The system includes a branching unit 860km from France and 650km from the UK. The device allows owners to switch either individual optical wavelengths between different landings or the full fibre capacity via two different types of switching technologies.
Latency from Bordeaux to New York is 34ms, compared to a slightly higher trans-Atlantic latency on the Dunant cable of 38ms. Crucially, both cables have unique routes, which avoids any risk of traffic interruption and can improve resiliency for users that employ both solutions.
In France, Orange oversees the French part of the cable, and is in charge of operating and maintaining the system's landing station.
It provides all Amitie cable partners with the terrestrial infrastructure required for its smooth operation, from the limit of French territorial waters to the new Equinix data centre based in Bordeaux.
Orange also plans to expand its offering to its wholesale and enterprise customers connectivity from the US to European hotspots.
