200Gbps Boost for Subsea Fibre Network Between New York and UK

Aqua Comms comparatively new transatlantic subsea fibre optic cable system (AEConnect), which runs between New York (USA) and London (UK), has been given a boost after CenturyLink activated two 100 Gigabit waves of high capacity connectivity on the cable.

The AEConnect cable, which only became ready for service in January 2016, runs from a landing station in Shirley, Long Island (USA) and traverses 5536km to a corresponding cable landing station in Killala (Mayo), Ireland. After that there are a number of shorter subsea and land-based diverse backhaul crossings to reach the final destination point in London.

Transatlantic bandwidth between New York and London is said to still be in high demand and so it’s little surprise that customers are already taking advantage of the new route.

Tom McMahon, Aqua Comms CTO, said:

“The circuits Aqua Comms has provided to CenturyLink from New York City to London are lit Point of Presence (PoP) to PoP with no intermediate or cable landing station regeneration. Traversing over 6,800 kilometers, the high capacity transatlantic route includes diverse terrestrial segments on both ends, enabling CenturyLink to provision end-to-end high capacity connectivity without regeneration, utilising advanced modulation techniques.”

The cable itself, which cost around £230 million ($300m) to build at today’s exchange rate, is apparently rated to handle even more capacity and can reach 130 wavelength services at 100Gbps (Gigabits per second) per fibre pair.