FLAG Telecom Launches $2.1 Billion Pacific Fiber Project
To deliver 5.12 Tb/s of fully-protected traffic capacity, the system will possess total raw capacity of 10.24 Tb/s. FLAG contracted Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), as prime supplier of the undersea network. "Delivering over 5 Tbps of secure capacity, FLAG Pacific-1 is the largest capacity system yet announced, and at over 22,000 km, it will be the longest transoceanic DWDM system ever at such a level of capacity," says Alcatel Optics President Christian Reinaudo, noting that the project will be the world's first eight-fiber-pair transoceanic system.
Network architecture
The design includes integrated backhaul networks for city-to-city connectivity. Alcatel will supply the terrestrial transmission equipment including 10 Gb/s add/drop multiplexers, dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) at 64 wavelengths, optical protection switches in the landing points, and an integrated management system for both submarine and terrestrial networks.
The FP-1 design sports eight pairs of large effective area fiber, with 64 wavelengths per fiber pair and 10 Gb/s per wavelength line rate. Alcatel is increasing the number of wavelengths per fiber pair by narrowing the wavelength spacing and increasing the overall bandwidth. The system capacity equates to five hundred hours of digital video per second (over a month's TV output every second), FLAG calculates.
FP-1 will connect two city nodes in Tokyo, with two Japanese beach landings, to the cities of Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and two Beach Landings on Vancouver Island and in the Bay Area on the US West Coast. Regenerator points will be in Hawaii for the southern cable, and on the Aleuthian peninsula in Alaska for the northern cable. Regenerating both of the trans-Pacific links keeps the maximum span length below 6,300 km, a major factor in maximizing the number of wavelengths on each fiber.
Customers will be able to add or drop traffic at any of the beach landings, city nodes, and at the Hawaiian regeneration station. The FP-1 design includes integrated backhaul networks for city-to-city connectivity, and employs state of the art technology to maximise the capacity of the system.
FLAG network
With the addition of FP-1 the FLAG Telecom network will extend over 64,500 km. The network will stretch from New York City across the Atlantic to Paris, London and all major European business centres, through the Middle East, Africa and on to Asia, Tokyo and, with FP-1, the West Coast of the United States. Ultimately, FLAG plans to deploy a 100,000 km fiber network.
FLAG will finance the project with funds from its recent IPO and senior note offering of FLAG Telecom Holdings Limited, capacity sales, and, non-recourse bank debt. A supply contract to build the subsea sections of the cable system has been awarded to
The resilient-loop design of FP-1 matches that of FLAG Atlantic-1, a multi-terabit system now under construction by Alcatel between New York, Paris and London.
FLAG has a customer base of over 90 carriers, including 17 of the top 20 carriers rated by TeleGeography. Alcatel claims the highest active capacity up to 5.12 Tb/s for long-haul systems and 3.6 Tb/s for short-haul systems, 85,000 km per year manufacturing capacity at facilities located around the world, and seven vessels, with $4.5 billion in undersea systems under contract, including: Atlantica-1 and FLAG Atlantic-1 systems in the Atlantic; the FLAG Pacific-1, Japan-US, and Southern Cross transpacific systems; the MAC and MAYA-1 systems in the Americas; and the SAT-3 around Africa.
Edited by Erik Kreifeldt