Southern Cross Cables completes 100 Gbps trial

Southern Cross Cables, which gained early notoriety in the submarine cable race as the only international submarine cable system that provides service to New Zealand, has completed its 100 Gbps optical transmission trial.

Although the 100 Gbps capabilities won't actually be ready for use until 2013, Southern Cross said that its latest 40 Gbps upgrade will be ready in 2012. Right now, Southern Cross' network is 10 Gbps capable.

"While it is unlikely that we will be able use the 100 Gbps equipment for next year's upgrade, it is going to be an option much sooner than we previously thought and the potential size of our network will keep growing in huge leaps," said Ross Pfeffer, Southern Cross sales and marketing director in a statement. "It is a feature of our network that we can readily replace land based transmission systems with equipment that provides continuing improvements in performance."

When Southern Cross completes the 40 Gbps upgrade, Southern Cross' network capacity will be able scale to about 6 Tbps, which is about 25 times higher than the 240 Gbps design it devised when it launched the cable in 2000.

Not surprisingly, Southern Cross is timing its upgrade with the introduction of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) and New Zealand's Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) initiatives.

But like all telecom industry segments, Southern Cross will soon face new competition from emerging rival Pacific Fibre Cable System that will provide a link between Sydney, Auckland and Los Angeles over a 5.12 Tbps two-pair fiber system.

For more:
- TeleGeography has this article

Related articles:
TeleGeography: 16 new submarine cables on tap
Pacific Fibre gets its financing sources in order
Pacnet, Pacific Fibre to construct new trans-Pacific submarine cable
Pacific Fibre sets ambitious undersea network course