Telecom equipment company Infinera announced that Asia-Africa-Europe-1 Consortium (AAE-1), one of the world’s largest consortium cable systems, has completed a major upgrade with Infinera to boost capacity in its subsea network connecting East Asia to Europe via Egypt
Based on Infinera’s fourth-generation Infinite Capacity Engine (ICE4) technology and Instant Bandwidth capability, the Infinera solution enabled AAE-1 to double its intercontinental network capacity, while reducing overall ownership costs and increasing service agility and network reliability.
AAE-1’s cable system spans 25,000 km of subsea and terrestrial network. Unlike any other cable system in the world, AAE-1 terminates at two points of presence in Singapore and is the only next-generation cable that continues further into Asia through diverse terrestrial routes across Thailand, providing connectivity to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Hong Kong.
This routing enables AAE-1 to deliver one of the lowest-latency routes between Hong Kong, India, the Middle East, and Europe.
Loucas Balis, chairman, AAE-1 Management Committee, said, “AAE-1 is an important subsea cable asset for carriers globally, with bandwidth needs growing rapidly, particularly during this very difficult and deeply sad global crisis. After a rigorous evaluation, we selected Infinera for its superior reach, optical transmission performance, and reliability.”
Giuseppe Sini, vice chairman, AAE-1 Management Committee, said, “When selecting a solution for AAE-1, it was critical to select a vendor with a seamless scalable solution for the entire network, with great economics. Infinera gave AAE-1 the ability to activate capacity quickly and really differentiate our services. Infinera has been an excellent choice.”
Nick Walden, senior vice-president, Worldwide Sales at Infinera, commented, “We are pleased to support AAE-1’s network upgrade, delivering the benefits of Infinera’s photonic integrated circuit-based ICE4 solution, featuring industry-leading spectral efficiency, Nyquist subcarriers, SD-FEC gain sharing, and Smart Optimise. The deployed solution also delivered extended C-band open line system terrestrial crossings that are expandable in-service to L-band.”
