Southern Cross accelerates 100G network plans, lowers prices

Southern Cross, a submarine cable operator offering service between Australia and the United States, on Monday said that it plans to deploy 100G transmission equipment and reduce service prices.

The service provider said it has reduced network service prices by 44 percent for service providers that need connectivity between the two countries, following its upgrade to 40G with Ciena's (Nasdaq: CIEN) transmission equipment. This is the tenth price reduction Southern Cross has made since 2000.

As the second stage of its capacity expansion program, which is due to be completed in February, the 40G network will bring total capacity on the Southern Cross network to 2 Tbps.

But it appears that the company's 10G to 40G upgrade is going to be a short stop. A part of the third stage of its ongoing expansion program is a plan to deploy Ciena's 100G optical equipment by December.

Since the company conducted a 100G trial in June 2011 with Ciena, stage three of the network expansion will offer 2.6 Tbps of lit capacity by June this year.

"The implementation of 100 Gigabit equipment this year is some two years sooner than previously anticipated and it demonstrates how the potential size of our network grows in huge leaps," said Ross Pfeffer, Southern Cross sales and marketing director.

Pfeffer added they have built a foundation "to go to at least 7 Terabits per second, about 30 times higher than our original design capability."

Southern Cross' network has provided much needed backhaul connectivity for two major broadband network projects: Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) and New Zealand's Ultra Fiber Network.

For more:
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