NTT Communications announced the world’s first deployment of 100 Gbps digital coherent technology on a transpacific submarine cable system linking the U.S. and Japan.
The design capacity of the company’s PC-1 system has now been boosted by more than 2.5 times to 8.4 Tbps.
NTT Comm said the upgrade was made possible by optically optimizing the PC-1’s network architecture, including with strategically placed optical repeaters and an enhanced optical fiber layout.
By the end of 2014, 100 Gbps optical transmission technology also will be deployed in NTT Com’s Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), which links major cities in Asia via the shortest possible route for industry leading low latency.
- In October 2011, Infinera and Pacific Crossing, a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT Communications, completed a 100 Gbps trial using the PC-1 transpacific submarine cable system. The test spanned more than 9,500 kilometers from California to Japan. Infinera said this trial demonstrates the unique ability to deliver two industry firsts. The 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) demonstration was the first transmission of a 100 GbE client service carried across the Pacific using 40 Gbps optical channels with Infinera’s FlexCoherent transmission. The success of this trial was based on Infinera’s commercially available 40 Gbps optical line module and 100 GbE client interface on Infinera’s DTN platform. The second demonstration was the first realization of a 100 Gbps optical channel using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) with soft decision forward error correction (SD FEC) .
- In 2009, NTT Communications acquired Pacific Crossing, which built the PC-1 trans-Pacific undersea cable network. The system has landings at Harbour Pointe, Washington (near Seattle); Grover Beach, California (between San Francisco and Los Angeles); Ajigaura, Japan (near Tokyo); and Shima, Japan (near Osaka and Nagoya).
- In March 2008, Fujitsu and Pacific Crossing completed an upgrade project that more than doubles the capacity of the 21,000-kilometer PC-1 trans-Pacific fiber optic submarine cable network. The project, which began in September 2007, involved the installation of Fujitsu’s FLASHWAVE S650 submarine wavelength divisional multiplexer equipment in Pacific Crossing’s cable landing stations, and the upgrade of the overall capacity to 1.98Tbps, of which 1.01Tbps is available on the two Trans-Pacific segments.
