Southern Cross picks Ciena to Launch 400GbE services

Southern Cross Cables Limited (“Southern Cross”), Australasia’s specialist international capacity provider has announced the availability of commercial 400GbE services on its Southern Cross NEXT (“NEXT”) cable, between Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

Laurie Miller, CEO of Southern Cross said the introduction of what is believed to be, Australasia’s first international 400GbE services and the current world’s longest single system data-centre to data-centre 400GbE services, is a game changer for customers.

“With the Southern Cross NEXT cable system, the new technology and capability has been designed to support the rising demand for bandwidth driven by cloud adoption and digitisation. We are now thrilled to be able to offer 400GbE Layer 1 services as the first of several planned innovations taking advantage of the Southern Cross eco-system, and the new NEXT cable.”

“The availability of 400GbE services will allow customers hyper-scale low-latency connectivity directly between data-centres in Sydney and Los Angeles, and with a new Auckland DC PoP due for implementation in 2023. Demand for 100G+ high-capacity links has been booming in recent years particularly for data-centre to data-centre GCN connectivity, where extremely large and resilient volumes of data are required to traverse core network infrastructure for data replication, data storage connectivity and disaster recovery. An application where the Southern Cross multi-path eco-system excels.”

Southern Cross’ 400GbE service runs on Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics and is managed by the Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller. To accommodate increasing and changing network traffic demands, Southern Cross’s eco-system also incorporates Ciena’s 5400 and 8700 platforms, providing the ability to deploy services from 100Mbs now up to 400GbE connectivity over applicable wavelengths.

Ivan Polizzi, Regional Managing Director, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands for Ciena, said: “With such a flexible and scalable network foundation from Ciena, Southern Cross is able to target the growing demands of today’s networks and provide customers with unrivalled connectivity by way of applications such as 400GbE services. This is important as Ciena and Southern Cross continue to collaborate on future opportunities and innovations to meet changing customer and industry demands."

Southern Cross 400GbE services will be available directly from Southern Cross and through its participating resale channel partners.

The NEXT cable is the third route in the Southern Cross network eco-system between Australia and the USA and was launched on July 7, 2022. The NEXT cable lands at Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles and supports Southern Cross’ continuing mission to enable reliable connectivity between the people and communities of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands to the rest of the world.

The NEXT cable also provides the first international submarine fibre connections to Tokelau and Kiribati and reinforces Fiji’s growing role as a digital hub for the Pacific Islands.

The NEXT system is one of three diverse submarine cable routes, with more than 20 access points, and over 43,000km of fibre comprising the Southern Cross eco-system, supporting high capacity and low latency routes between Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tokelau, Kiribati, Hawaii, and the United States West Coast.

Southern Cross Cables Ltd (SCCL) is a leading independent Australasian supplier of international capacity to Carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region. SCCL was originally formed in 1997 to establish the Southern Cross Cable Network, a twin submarine cable link between Australasia and the United States West Coast and was designed to provide enhanced reliability, quality and network efficiency.