International Network Service Provider Crosslake Fibre, says its CrossChannel submarine cable is now ready for service. CrossChannel is a high-capacity, 96 fibre pair system capable of supporting over 2,400Tbps of capacity. The 550km system has a 149km submarine segment and is designed to be physically diverse of existing fibre infrastructure. CrossChannel directly connects Equinix LD4 in Slough, UK, to Interxion PAR3 and Equinix PA7 in Paris with extensions to various points-of-presence in both cities.
Crosslake says CrossChannel is now the lowest latency fibre connectivity between these two financial and data centre hubs delivering connectivity in less than 5.5milliseconds round trip delay (RTD). The shorter length of the system also serves to reduce the risk of outages and provides users with lower operating costs given fewer amplification sites. To support ever increasing traffic growth driven by the cloud, video, and Internet of Things (IoT), Crosslake is providing a Dark Fibre service and also deploying Ciena’s 6500 packet-optical platform powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme, providing a differentiated customer experience with more bandwidth and resiliency.
Additionally, Crosslake is using Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) with Liquid Spectrum’s Channel Margin Gauge app to allocate and scale capacity in real time, from 600Gbps to 800Gbps and quickly adapt to changing customer requirements and maximise the value of the deployed system.
“The CrossChannel system will provide critical Internet backbone infrastructure across the English Channel for decades to come,” states Mike Cunningham, CEO, Crosslake Fibre. “We are excited to launch the CrossChannel system which is the culmination of years of development and incredible effort by the Crosslake Fibre team and its many suppliers.”
The CrossChannel system is the second submarine cable system that has been developed and operated, by Crosslake Fibre. Crosslake’s Lake ontario system was put into service in late 2019 to provide connectivity between Toronto and New York with the same low latency, physically diverse design principles. The route of the CrossChannel cable was successfully surveyed in November 2000.
