Cisco and Superloop add two new subsea cables for Aus
Cisco and Superloop have announced two deployments of up to 400G for 4600km on the INDIGO West cable from Singapore to Australia, and the INDIGO Central cable from Perth to Sydney, featuring a two-fibre pair 'open cable' design with new spectrum sharing technology.
Superloop is a new independent fibre infrastructure provider designing and operating networks throughout the Asia Pacific region.
They are building critical core infrastructure for wholesale carriers and global content providers who require infinitely scalable and reliable capacity, on-demand.
"The INDIGO cable system completes the next stage of our Asia-Pac network infrastructure," says Superloop chief technology officer Ryan Crouch.
"We are now the sole operator that owns fibre to buildings in Australia, Singapore and HK, placing it at the forefront of optical fibre connection and transmission technologies. Working with Cisco on the INDIGO cable system was a logical extension of the partnership that helped create our Australian integrated backhaul network to the 121 points of interconnect. We are now truly positioned as the pan-Asia fibre operator to meet growing customer demand across the region.
"We are thrilled to work with such a forward-looking company that will leverage our NCS 1004 for their subsea routes. Superloop has now completed a new national backbone for Australia and operates carrier-grade metro networks in Singapore and Hong Kong," adds Cisco optical system and optics general manager and senior vice president Bill Gartner.
The Cisco NCS 1004 is optimised to maximise capacity with a minimum space and power footprint. At 2RU, the system supports up to 4.8Tbps of client and up to 4.8Tbps of trunk traffic. And in addition to the subsea applications, the NCS 1004 is also well suited for terrestrial long haul deployments as well as metro data center interconnect applications.
"Every day we are building a network that reaches further and is becoming more advanced. With Cisco as part of our infrastructure, nothing is holding us back," says Superloop CEO Drew Kelton.
Earlier this year, another subsea cable upgrade was announced by Telstra and Infinera who partnered to upgrade Telstra's subsea infrastructure to include Infinera's Infinite Capacity Engine 4 (ICE4).
The ICE4 subsea solution is being rolled out across Telstra's entire Asia Pacific subsea infrastructure, which will allow for a 160% fibre capacity boost and a 140% port capacity boost.
"The Asian region presents one of the most challenging environments for subsea cable systems. Busy and shallow shipping ports in Hong Kong and Singapore, high-levels of fishing activity and an ecosystem prone to natural disasters, all threaten to disrupt or damage underwater infrastructure," Telstra connectivity and platforms head Nadya Melic said at the time.
"Damage to a subsea cable can take weeks or even months to fix. But with our new continuous connection service, we are able to reroute customers impacted by potential damage to another subsea cable path on our three path network in less than 30 minutes.
