Commercial 400GbE services are now available on Southern Cross Cables’ Southern Cross NEXT cable connecting Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Launched on July 7, 2022, the NEXT cable is the third route in the Southern Cross network eco-system connecting Australia and the United States.
The NEXT cable lands at Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles. It would 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 would further strengthen Fiji’s expanding position as a digital center for the Pacific Islands by establishing the first international underwater fiber links to Tokelau and Kiribati.
The Southern Cross eco-system, which consists of three distinct submarine cable routes and more than 20 access points spread across over 43,000 km of fiber, supports high capacity and low latency routes between Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tokelau, Kiribati, Hawaii, and the West Coast of the United States.
Direct Connectivity Data Centers in Sydney and Los Angeles
The installation of what is thought to be the first international 400GbE services in Australasia and the current longest single system data center to data center 400GbE services is a game changer for clients, according to Laurie Miller, CEO at Southern Cross.
“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 digitization,” said Mr. Miller. “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 hyperscale low-latency connectivity directly between data centers in Sydney and Los Angeles, and with a new Auckland DC PoP due for implementation in 2023,” added Mr. Miller. “Demand for 100G+ high-capacity links has been booming in recent years particularly for data center to data center 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 services will be available directly from Southern Cross and through its participating resale channel partners.
Ciena’s 5400 and 8700 Platforms
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.
Southern Cross’ ecosystem also includes Ciena’s 5400 and 8700 platforms, giving it the capacity to offer services from 100Mbs currently up to 400GbE connection over appropriate wavelengths in order to meet the demands of the growing and changing network traffic.
“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,” said Ivan Polizzi, Regional Managing Director, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands at Ciena. “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 Cables is an independent Australasian supplier of international capacity to carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region. The Southern Cross Cable Network, a twin undersea cable link between Australasia and the US West Coast, was established by Southern Cross Cables in 1997 with the goal of enhancing network efficiency, dependability, and quality.
