The company said this advancement will lead to significant improvements to cable system efficiency, creating benefits for operators in terms of total cost of network ownership. Mainly driven by connectivity needs, unrepeatered undersea cable projects consist in the construction of cable systems for distances currently up to 500km without using repeaters to amplify the signal. Built to offer additional capacity and/or complement terrestrial networks to gain resiliency, they can offer a design capacity of 25 Tbit/s depending on the system configuration.
Olivier Gautheron, Chief Technology Officer of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks said: “Operators’ infrastructures continue to be challenged by the demands of traffic arising from broadband services and content delivery. ASN’s breakthrough further demonstrates the application of our own innovation to extend the reach of unrepeatered submarine cable systems in order to enhance their performance to help operators get the most out of their networks and build new revenue streams.”
ASN has so far deployed more than 20,000 km of unrepeatered cable systems in more than 40 projects for major telecom operators worldwide.