Southern Cross Cables Limited was formed in 1997, the result of an initiative between a number of telcos to establish an independent company to build and market a submarine cable between Australasia and the United States’ West Coast, due to a rapid growth in internet capacity and a resulting bottleneck in traffic for carriers in each region. Fast forward 25 years, and Southern Cross Cables provides connectivity between the U.S., Australia and New Zealand via the Pacific Islands, having deployed two submarine cables with a potential capacity of 20Tbs. A third submarine cable, the Southern Cross NEXT submarine cable, is in the works and promises to provide more than 70Tbs of data-center connectivity between Sydney, Auckland, and Los Angeles, and provide critical Pacific Island connections to Fiji, Tokelau, and Kiribati.
Like any network provider, there is an ongoing need to adapt to the constantly evolving needs of its end users, who require seemingly endless amounts of bandwidth to continually support web-scale demand for content, video and gaming applications. The challenge for Southern Cross, compared to your typical, terrestrial-based network, is that their cables span nearly 29,000 kilometers underwater, with a further 1,600 kilometers on land.
Enter Ciena. The two companies have worked together for decades, enabling the transmission of data over great distances for Southern Cross’ customers. It’s used many iterations of Ciena’s flagship coherent optical technology, WaveLogic.
To meet the evolving expectations of its customers, Southern Cross deployed Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme, the industry’s first 800G commercial solution. Southern Cross connected two major data centers via W5Le, connecting the world’s first single wavelength 800G across a live production network. Leveraging this leading-edge coherent optical technology, Southern Cross is now able to provide an end-to-end connectivity solution that is faster, uses less space and power, and delivers up to 50 percent more capacity than previous generation technology.
“In today’s increasingly hyper-connected world, delivering an incredible customer experience depends on the ability of Southern Cross to create innovative services and provide the capacity needed to meet ever-changing demands,” said Laurie Miller, President and CEO, Southern Cross Cables Limited. “We have a long history in working with Ciena, and its WL5e technology allows us to deliver on our ambitions once again.”
Ciena solutions supporting Southern Cross
Southern Cross is leveraging Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme (WL5e) coherent optics. In addition, Southern Cross is using Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme solution, which includes the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform powered by WL5e, to upgrade capacity by more than 40 times the original design potential, utilizing the same infrastructure that was originally designed to transport 2.5Gbps wavelengths.
Learn more about the Southern Cross Cable ecosystem and its Southern Cross NEXT cable here.