Equinix and Telxius, Telefónica’s infrastructure subsidiary, are collaborating on U.S. facilities and services for the next-generation cable landing station architecture for the MAREA and BRUSA cable systems, both of which terminate at a cable landing station in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
The next-generation cable landing station architecture will extend the backhaul capacity into Equinix DC2 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center, simplifying network design and providing access to a dense, rich ecosystem of networks, clouds and IT service providers. Equinix customers will have direct access to the MAREA and BRUSA cable systems via a simple cross connect from any IBX data center.
The 6,600 km MAREA subsea cable, which was jointly funded by Microsoft and Facebook, is the highest capacity subsea cable system built across the Atlantic, consisting of eight fiber pairs with an initial estimated design capacity of 160 Tbps. Telxius is responsible for the operation of the cable and leverages its IP, capacity, colocation and security services through it.
Telxius is also building BRUSA, a new subsea cable spanning 10,900 km linking Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza, Brazil, with San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Virginia Beach, VA. BRUSA, which is slated for completion by mid-2018, also features eight fiber pairs.
Telxius has points of presence (PoPs) in more than 20 Equinix IBX data centers around the globe to support the Telxius network, including DC2 and DC6; MI1 and MI2; SP1, SP2, SP3 and SP4; RJ1 and RJ2 at which the MAREA and BRUSA cable systems terminate.
“We’re partnering on new cable landing station projects that give our customers improved access to the expanding global subsea cable network. With this next-generation cable landing station design, the cables extend directly to an Equinix IBX data center. That means any user of a subsea cable system that lands inside one of our Equinix global data center termination points has instant, low-latency access to a host of vibrant industry ecosystems inside Equinix, and that’s a huge advantage,” stated Jim Poole, Vice President, Business Development, Equinix.
“This new cable landing station design effectively connects the data center and submarine communications worlds and opens the door to faster growth in bandwidth rates for our customers. This cutting-edge architecture leverages the ultra-high capacity of BRUSA and MAREA, two of the highest capacity cables ever built. It has been developed to fully address the needs of our customers in terms of both capacity and efficiency,” stated Rafael Arranz, Chief Operations Officer, Telxius Cable Business
Telefónica’s Telxius infrastructure arm expands its global reach
Telxius, Telefónica’s infrastructure arm, was established in February 2016. It owns and operates a portfolio comprising nearly 16,300 telecom towers in five countries and manages an international network with around 65,000 km of submarine optical cable, including around 31,000 km owned by Telxius. The Telxius-owned network includes SAM-1 linking the U.S., Central and South America, PCCS (Pacific Caribbean Cable System) and Unisur, which connects…
