Southern Cross goes elastic!
Wellington, New Zealand – 10 January 2017 – Southern Cross Cable Network today announced the availability of its Trans-Pacific Gigaflex elastic capacity offerings, designed to make life easier for smaller operators and the Pacific Islands.
The new Trans-Pacific bandwidth on demand capability across the Southern Cross network leverages its presence in 15 cable stations and data centres across Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii and the United States West Coast.
The platform will also seamlessly integrate with the planned new Southern Cross NEXT high capacity low latency route between Sydney, Auckland and Los Angeles due for scheduled completion in 2019. The Southern Cross NEXT system is planned to have an initial capacity more than 60 terabits, adding to the existing 20 terabit capability of the current Southern Cross systems. Given its design and route, it will be the lowest latency path to the United States by some considerable margin and will provide immediate benefit to customers with additional route diversity.
President and CEO, Anthony Briscoe said “Southern Cross has been trialing the capability over the last 9 months, with our technology partner Ciena. We are well known for our product innovation, being one of the first submarine cable systems to offer Ethernet services back in 2008, as well as achieving regional and world firsts in the implementation of 200Gbs wavelengths across parts of our network, and implementation of market leading 15Tbs switching fabric technology to help underpin and grow our resilient and flexible network fabric. All these innovations support our customers need for continued growth as they continue to implement web-scale technologies.”
“Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a reasonably new network technology development that is being tested by several operators worldwide. The Gigaflex bandwidth on demand capability is our first entrance into the SDN arena, in what we believe to be another world first for a pure submarine cable operator.”
“However, it is not about the technology or simply a single product. The introduction of a platform allowing us to support ‘elastic’ services, allows us to develop new products to make Trans-Pacific interconnectivity more accessible. This we believe is particularly important in certain markets such as the Pacific Islands where commitments to large forward capacity and capital requirements are simply not sustainable. Using our access points in Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, New Zealand and the USA the platform will allow us to offer more tailored offerings focused on ‘pay as you grow’ and ‘pay as you use’ capacity solutions.”
Southern Cross has 15 existing cable station and data centre locations across Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii and the US West Coast and is looking at potential further expansion as part of the Southern Cross NEXT project. These existing key locations include sites such as 1 Wilshire, and 600 West 7th in Los Angeles, the Westin Building Exchange in Seattle, and the Palo Alto Internet Exchange amongst others utilised by content operators, and existing Southern Cross customers, and will allow customers to seamlessly leverage the interconnect arrangements they already have in place.
The Southern Cross elastic solution is based around the industry leading Ciena Blue Planet software technologies, as well as the 5400 (OTN) and 8700 Packetwave (Ethernet) Service layers, providing a next-generation software and hardware architecture.
Ciena’s Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, Anthony McLachlan, stated, “Ciena and Southern Cross have a long-standing partnership and we have worked closely to ensure their network can efficiently scale to support the massive surge of traffic from cloud computing, video, and other bandwidth-intensive services. Southern Cross has built a reputation on its ability to provide innovative services and high-speed broadband to customers across Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Fiji and the Pacific Islands.”
End of Release
Southern Cross goes elastic!
Wellington, New Zealand – 10 January 2017 – Southern Cross Cable Network today announced the availability of its Trans-Pacific Gigaflex elastic capacity offerings, designed to make life easier for smaller operators and the Pacific Islands.
The new Trans-Pacific bandwidth on demand capability across the Southern Cross network leverages its presence in 15 cable stations and data centres across Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii and the United States West Coast.
The platform will also seamlessly integrate with the planned new Southern Cross NEXT high capacity low latency route between Sydney, Auckland and Los Angeles due for scheduled completion in 2019. The Southern Cross NEXT system is planned to have an initial capacity more than 60 terabits, adding to the existing 20 terabit capability of the current Southern Cross systems. Given its design and route, it will be the lowest latency path to the United States by some considerable margin and will provide immediate benefit to customers with additional route diversity.
President and CEO, Anthony Briscoe said “Southern Cross has been trialing the capability over the last 9 months, with our technology partner Ciena. We are well known for our product innovation, being one of the first submarine cable systems to offer Ethernet services back in 2008, as well as achieving regional and world firsts in the implementation of 200Gbs wavelengths across parts of our network, and implementation of market leading 15Tbs switching fabric technology to help underpin and grow our resilient and flexible network fabric. All these innovations support our customers need for continued growth as they continue to implement web-scale technologies.”
“Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a reasonably new network technology development that is being tested by several operators worldwide. The Gigaflex bandwidth on demand capability is our first entrance into the SDN arena, in what we believe to be another world first for a pure submarine cable operator.”
“However, it is not about the technology or simply a single product. The introduction of a platform allowing us to support ‘elastic’ services, allows us to develop new products to make Trans-Pacific interconnectivity more accessible. This we believe is particularly important in certain markets such as the Pacific Islands where commitments to large forward capacity and capital requirements are simply not sustainable. Using our access points in Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, New Zealand and the USA the platform will allow us to offer more tailored offerings focused on ‘pay as you grow’ and ‘pay as you use’ capacity solutions.”
Southern Cross has 15 existing cable station and data centre locations across Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii and the US West Coast and is looking at potential further expansion as part of the Southern Cross NEXT project. These existing key locations include sites such as 1 Wilshire, and 600 West 7th in Los Angeles, the Westin Building Exchange in Seattle, and the Palo Alto Internet Exchange amongst others utilised by content operators, and existing Southern Cross customers, and will allow customers to seamlessly leverage the interconnect arrangements they already have in place.
The Southern Cross elastic solution is based around the industry leading Ciena Blue Planet software technologies, as well as the 5400 (OTN) and 8700 Packetwave (Ethernet) Service layers, providing a next-generation software and hardware architecture.
Ciena’s Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, Anthony McLachlan, stated, “Ciena and Southern Cross have a long-standing partnership and we have worked closely to ensure their network can efficiently scale to support the massive surge of traffic from cloud computing, video, and other bandwidth-intensive services. Southern Cross has built a reputation on its ability to provide innovative services and high-speed broadband to customers across Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Fiji and the Pacific Islands.”
End of Release
About Southern Cross
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.
Total lit capacity is currently 5.8Tbps, with latest technology trials confirming Southern Cross potential capacity of 20Tbs. The Southern Cross NEXT project will add a third high capacity, low latency route to the existing Southern Cross eco-system by 2019, further increasing the value and utility available to customers from their investments in Southern Cross and Southern Cross NEXT.
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
