Asia-Africa-Europe-1 (AAE-1) Consortium, owner of one of the largest consortium cable systems in the world, has selected the ICE6 coherent 800G solution from optical networking solutions company Infinera to increase its submarine network capacity and provide diverse, resilient connectivity across European, Asian, African and Middle Eastern markets.
AAE-1’s submarine upgrade will, says Infinera, more than double the current capacity, providing in excess of 100 Tb/s. The result, it adds, will be the largest-scale submarine upgrade in history.
AAE-1’s cable system spans 25,000 kilometres of submarine and terrestrial networks, connecting 19 countries led by a consortium of 19 leading operators.
Unlike any other cable system in the world, AAE-1 terminates at two points of presence in Singapore for enhanced route diversity and is the only next-generation cable that extends farther into Asia via diverse terrestrial routes across Thailand to provide connectivity to Vietnam, Cambodia and Hong Kong.
This unique routing enables AAE-1 to deliver one of the lowest-latency routes between Hong Kong, India, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.
By upgrading with Infinera’s fifth-generation ICE6 technology on the GX Series Compact Modular Platform, AAE-1 is able to leverage a submarine optical network solution that, says Infinera, features the highest level of spectral efficiency, long-codeword probabilistic constellation shaping (LC-PCS), Nyquist subcarriers, and the ability to seamlessly upgrade its line system to enable L-band transponders on some of its terrestrial network segments.