Fujitsu Limited announced that it has been awarded a contract by the global communications carrier FLAG Telecom Group Limited to significantly increase capacity on key segments of the FLAG Europe - Asia (FEA) submarine cable system by upgrading terminal station equipment without changing the cable, repeaters or other submarine hardware.
The contract that Fujitsu has been awarded is to increase the line capacity of the segment from Alexandria, Egypt to Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, using hardware that includes Fujitsu's FLASHWAVE S650 submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE) and FLASHWAVE 4560 add-drop multiplexers (ADM). The adoption of this hardware will double original bandwidth capacity from 10 Gbps to 20 Gbps, and ultimately it could increase capacity by a factor of eight, representing capacity equivalent to approximately one million phone lines. Moreover, the FLASHWAVE S650 doubles the transmission speed of FEA's previous SLTE, although it is considerably more compact, at only about one-sixth the size.
FLAG Telecom's Chief Technology Officer Andrew Evans stated: "Upgrading FEA enables FLAG Telecom to target future demand for high quality transport services, especially in the Middle Eastern markets. By applying technology that is available today, we expect to be able to add capacity significantly in excess of the original design capacity of FEA in a cost effective manner, and with virtually no impact on our customers."
After a rush to undertake massive, high-bandwidth underseacable projects in the mid 1990s, telecommunication carriers have been left with tightly constrained resources for new capital investment, making it very difficult to undertake new investments in submarine cable systems. Nevertheless, with the global spread of broadband utilization, there is continuing demand for new line capacity. Fujitsu seeks to capitalize on these market needs by tapping its accumulated technical expertise and customer-centric solutions to expand the capacity of existing cable systems. Over the next two years Fujitsu seeks to capture over 50% of the upgrade market.
