Southern Cross – Great Southern LAN

Southern Cross Cable Network  today announced that it has deployed the Ciena 8700 Packetwave packet switching platform, augmenting its existing suite of successful Carrier Ethernet services.

President & CEO, Anthony Briscoe, commented that Southern Cross continues to work closely with Ciena to continually innovate and take advantage of technology advances to enhance the value that the Southern Cross Network can bring to its customers and support the development of high-speed broadband in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Fiji and the Pacific Islands.

“Southern Cross introduced Ethernet Private Line (EPL) services in 2009, one of the first submarine cable operators to do so globally, initially based on SDH technology, and later enhanced with OTN based services culminating with the activation of 100GbE services earlier in 2015.”

Southern Cross CTO, Dean Veverka said, “With the growth of content and cloud demand, it is not surprising that Carrier Ethernet based services have become hugely popular and dominate the requested capacity service types for many providers including Southern Cross.”

“The introduction of Ciena’s 8700 with integrated coherent 100G WaveLogic3 line modules for this market application is yet another world first achieved by Southern Cross. Southern Cross remains critically focused on product and service innovation to continue to enhance its existing product suites to satisfy changing customer and industry demands. The deployment of Ciena’s 8700 platform allows us to provide a seamless MEF CE2.0 compliant Carrier Ethernet packet offering from 1Gbs all the way through to 100Gbs.”

“Coupled with close integration to our existing Ciena photonic and switching platforms, and technologies already deployed in the network, including flexible grid, GeoMesh and 200Gbs wavelengths, the introduction of Ciena’s 8700 platform helps us to maximise capacity and resiliency while ensuring operational simplicity, scalability and evolution toward future flexible capacity services such as software defined networking (SDN).“

“Along with our existing key Internet data centre access points such as Equinix in Sydney, CoreSite in San Jose and the Westin Building in Seattle, these developments cement the Southern Cross position as the only single system provider of highly resilient innovative international capacity solutions between key data locations in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Fiji.”

Industry analyst IHS Infonetics reports that 100GbE interconnect is fast becoming the predominant service for data centre interconnect and now surpasses 10GbE and 40GbE deployments combined. [1]

Ciena’s Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, Anthony McLachlan, states: “Ciena’s 8700 Packetwave platform enables Southern Cross to meet changing customer demands and seize new business opportunities. High-bandwidth applications like video, cloud computing and machine-to-machine communications continue to put pressure on today’s networks, requiring service providers like Southern Cross to deploy technologies that not only increase capacity but also provide more intelligent, adaptable networks.”

Southern Cross and Ciena are both participating in the Pacific Telecommunications Council Conference (PTC16) event taking place January 17-20, 2016 in Honolulu, Hawaii. For more information about the event, visit http://www.ptc.org/ptc16

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[1] IHS Infonetics “100G Optical in the Metro” December, 2015

About Southern Cross
Southern Cross Cable Network provides fast, direct, and secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the heart of the Internet in the USA.

The Southern Cross Cable Network comprises two submarine communications cables which were first commissioned in November 2000 and January 2001 at a cost of USD1.3 billion. They provide Australasian broadband users with international connections to the US West coast where global Internet hubs are located.  In 2001 total installed capacity was 80 Gbps, and in January 2003 the total network was expanded to 480Gbps. Upgrades in 2009 and 2010 increased capacity to 1.2Tbps. The 40G Coherent technology upgrade in 2012 increased total lit capacity to 1.6Tbps with 100G Coherent upgrades further increasing lit capacity to 3.6Tbps during 2014. Latest technology trials have confirmed Southern Cross potential capacity of 14Tbs.

The Southern Cross Cable Network is owned by Spark NZ (50%), Singtel-Optus (40%) and Verizon Business (10%).

Southern Cross Cable Network has offices in Bermuda, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington.  For more information visit Southern Cross at:  http://www.southerncrosscables.com

Rosemay Foot
Media Manager
+64 4 496 3250
rosemay.foot@sccn.co.nz

Craige Sloots
Director Marketing & Sales
+61 2 8875 7870
craige.sloots@sccn.co.nz

Anthony Briscoe
President & CEO
+1 441 296 0309
anthony.briscoe@sccn.bm

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