Feb 3 2011
The co-owners of the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) have chosen Ciena and Alcatel-Lucent for their optical network expansion project.
Alcatel-Lucent specializes in IP, optics technologies and other networking services, while Ciena offers advanced ultra long-haul transmission and optical switching platform.
Ciena will provide optical switching equipment for 100 G transport to upgrade the terrestrial link that connects Alexandria to Suez in Egypt. In addition, Ciena will also supply the switching equipment to 16 cable-landing sites. Alcatel-Lucent will provide the upgrade to 40 G transmission of the entire submarine segments.
The network expansion will offer increased capability of up to 2.4 TB/s per fiber pair to the existing cable system. The current cabling system delivers high-speed broadband and internet services linking Europe to South East Asia and the Middle East.
Ciena will utilize the combination of coherent 100 G optics and the ActivFlex 6500 Packet-Optical Platform for 100 G upgrade of the terrestrial link in Egypt and portion of the terrestrial SDH. Furthermore, Ciena will use its multi-terabit ActivFlex 5430 Reconfigurable Switching solution for cable landing stations. Alcatel-Lucent will upgrade its coherent technology and the 1620 Light Manager to deliver 40 G speed. The company will also upgrade a portion of the 1678 Metro Core Connect installed on the terrestrial SDH side.