SEA-ME-WE 4 Cable System to Upgrade With 40G/100G Technologies, Significantly Increasing Its Overall Capacity
Alcatel-Lucent and Ciena selected as the contractors for the network upgrade
PARIS & LINTHICUM, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) co-owners have selected Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN - News) for their network expansion project. Alcatel-Lucent was selected for an upgrade to 40G (Gigabit per second) transmission of all the submarine segments. Ciena was selected to supply optical switching equipment for all 16 cable landing sites as well as for 100G transport for an upgrade of the terrestrial link connecting Alexandria to Suez in Egypt.
The deployment will commence in the first quarter of 2011, and will provide substantial capacity increase to the existing cable system (ultimate capacity of 2.4 Terabit per second per fiber pair), which supports the delivery of high-speed internet and broadband services along the approximately 20,000 km route connecting Europe to the Middle East and South East Asia.
Alcatel-Lucent will deploy its 1620 Light Manager upgraded to 40G with coherent technology, and also upgrade part of the already installed 1678 Metro Core Connect on the terrestrial SDH side. Ciena will deploy its multi-terabit ActivFlex 5430 Reconfigurable Switching System at cable landing stations and ActivFlex 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, equipped with coherent 100G optics, for the upgrade to 100G of the terrestrial link in Egypt and part of the terrestrial SDH.
More about the Alcatel-Lucent and Ciena solutions
Alcatel-Lucent will upgrade its 1620 Light Manager with next-generation coherent technology to offer 40G speeds. Signal processing associated with coherent technology allows operators to deal with transmission impairments in a cost-effective and automated manner, and allows performance tuning through the life of the system. This flexibility in implementing different modulation formats enables Alcatel-Lucent to offer service providers the best technology option for new deployments and for existing networks.
Ciena will provide its ActivFlex 5430 with multi-terabit switching scalability and network resiliency Ciena will also provide its ActivFlex 6500 with coherent 100G optics, electronic dispersion compensation, and directionless and colorless ROADM functionality – which has been operating in live networks since Dec 2009 |
