Infinera said a test of its ICE6 optical engine on the Marea undersea trans-Atlantic cable saw it reach speeds of 30 Tbps on a single fibre pair over a distance of 6,640 km. In a blog post written by Geoff Bennett Director, Solutions Marketing Infinera, the company said the trial also achieved a record-breaking trans-Atlantic data rate of 700 Gbps per wavelength, described as the upper bound of the ICE6 technology. On a “deployable” basis with an allocated margin for real services, the results were 28 Tbps on a single fibre pair and 650 Gbps per wavelength.
Marea is a joint project between Microsoft, Facebook and Telefonica’s infrastructure subsidiary Telxius, the construction of which was completed in September 2017. The cable came online in 2018 and is made of 8 pairs of optic fibres between Virginia Beach, Virginia and Bilbao, Spain. In the blog, Facebook’s Global Network Optical Architect Steve Grubb said the 28 Tbps deployable speeds achieved by ICE6 represented “a huge improvement, especially in cable landing stations where real estate and power are often at a premium.”
