Southern Cross Picks Ciena to Enhance NEXT Cable Amid Bandwidth Boom

As end-user digital applications continue to proliferate and require global networks to become more adaptive, Southern Cross Cable Limited (“Southern Cross”) has picked Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine solution utilising Ciena’s 6500 Submarine Line Terminating Equipment (“SLTE”) powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics for the new 13,494 km Southern Cross NEXT (“NEXT”) submarine cable in the Pacific.

This deployment will allow Southern Cross to not only tackle the growing demand for bandwidth but also support the resiliency, reconfigurability, and rapid activation requirements that their customers have become accustomed to from Southern Cross.

The NEXT system will leverage Ciena’s WaveLogic 5 Extreme to seamlessly mesh the new system into the current Southern Cross network fabric while supporting higher connectivity services and a fully integrated eco-system. Consisting of three diverse submarine cable routes, 20+ access points, and over 43,000km, this single ecosystem supports high capacity and low latency routes between Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tokelau, Kiribati, Hawaii, and the US West Coast.

“Today’s work from home mandates and the sudden dramatic influx of remote digital requirements have generated major traffic spikes and required our customers to deliver increased capacity in extremely short time frames, a trend we expect to see for years to come,” said Mr Laurie Miller, President and CEO, Southern Cross Cables Limited. “In seeking the optimal solution for our NEXT system, we engaged an external global consultancy to independently review and evaluate the various leading industry solutions and after a thorough process, the Ciena WaveLogic 5 Extreme was identified as the ideal choice.”

To be completed in early 2022, the NEXT cable will leverage the Ciena GeoMesh Extreme submarine solution as part of the overall Southern Cross network fabric to seamlessly integrate the multiple terabits of traffic across the network; Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) for network planning and operational management of services; Insights Service to optimize network analysis; Blue Planet Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) to support and enhance service flexibility, all at lowering power requirements per bit in support of Southern Cross’ sustainability goals.

“By rolling out Ciena for NEXT, Southern Cross is proactively tackling the unprecedented appetite for bandwidth and ensuring record-breaking capacity over longer distances,” said Matt Vesperman, Managing Director for Ciena Australia and New Zealand. “Enabling this exciting new opportunity proves our technology prowess, delivery model and performance can be trusted.”