Submarine Cables and the Seven Seas: Verizon's 2009 Network Roadmap
Verizon Business plans an aggressive network expansion throughout Asia in 2009 as it builds submarine cables aimed at linking countries in four different continents.
Mon, February 09, 2009
Network World — Verizon Business plans an aggressive network expansion throughout Asia in 2009 as it builds submarine cables aimed at linking countries in four different continents.
One major expansion will be to extend the carrier's Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) cable to India. The cable, which currently connects the United States to mainland China, has an operating capacity of 3.2Tbps over a distance of more than 11,000 miles. Verizon, AT&T and their partners in the Trans-Pacific Express telecom consortium, first lit up the cable last September. The cable was the result of a $500 million made by Verizon, AT&T, China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Korea Telecom and Chunghwa Telecom.
In addition to expanding the TPE through to India, Verizon is also continuing its work on the Europe India Gateway cable that will span 13 countries from Europe to the Middle East to India. The new cable, which is slated to be ready for service in July 2010, will start in the United Kingdom, move down through France and Portugal and then to Mediterranean counties such as Libya and Egypt. From there, the cable will go south through the Red Sea before winding up in India via the Indian Ocean.
"This cable will solve a big piece of the puzzle of how we get to link Europe, the Middle East and Asia,"says Ihab Tarazi, Verizon Business' vice president for global network planning.
Tarazi says that Verizon's projects in India will comprise its largest investments in the coming year, as the carrier is no longer relying on Indian carriers to deliver its national and international long-distance services. The company also launched its own private IP MPLS service this past July with nodes in Bangalore, New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.
Turning away from Asia, Tarazi says that Verizon Business is still working on its plan to upgrade its major routes in the United States to 100Gbps. Although the company last year had hoped to start deploying 100Gbps technology within the United States in 2009, Tarazi says that the company will spend most of this year testing out its capabilities with the goal of deploying the technology in 2010.
Verizon first tested its 100G capabilities in 2007 when it transmitted a live video feed over 312 miles from Tampa to Miami. Joseph Cook, Verizon Business' vice president for global network engineering, says the 100G test "showed us that we could deploy 100G on routes and not disrupt current wavelengths."
100G networks are seen by many as a logical progression from the current standard of 10G Ethernet. In 2006, the IEEE's Higher Speed Study Group (HSSG) voted to pursue 100G Ethernet as its next major Ethernet standard. The HSSG said last summer that it was aiming to have a single standard developed that covered both 40G and 100G speeds by 2010, marking the first time that an Ethernet standards group had agreed to create one standard for two different speeds.
