Powered by TMCnet
 
| More

Cable Technology Feature Article

January 06, 2011

Hibernia Atlantic Undertakes Building of Historic Transatlantic Cable

By Mini Swamy, TMCnet Contributor


Huawei Marine Networks Co., Ltd., which has committed itself to the construction of global submarine cable communication networks, has offered to finance Project Express, the lowest latency fiber optic cable system connecting the greater New York City area with London.

Hibernia Atlantic, a transatlantic submarine cable and terrestrial fiber network that offers over 100 redundant network Points of Presence throughout Canada, U.S, U.K, and mainland Europe on over 24,000 kilometers of network, has received $250 million for building the transatlantic cable over a period of 10 years.

The transatlantic cable will offer Hibernia's GFN or Global Financial Network that includes traders, global banks and exchanges, connectivity with sub 60 milliseconds latency. On completion, Project Express will provide the fastest route across the Atlantic Ocean and will enable the world's largest exchanges' data centers to connect to its direct participants.

In a press release, Nigel Bayliff, CEO of Huawei (News - Alert) Marine Networks, stated that the company was proud to be a part of this historic cable build across the Atlantic and added that currently low latency routes were in high-demand because critical financial transactions needed high capacity, high speed, secure and reliable environments to transport from one key financial city or exchange to the next.

Additionally, Bayliff said that Hibernia Atlantic’s (News - Alert) GFN had already proven its value for financial networks and now with the Project Express construction underway, the company would soon offer the fastest route across the Atlantic. 

Bjami Thorvardarson, CEO of Hibernia Atlantic, touted the new Project Express and said that it would extend Hibernia's lowest latency connections to the larger Hibernia GFN Network.

He continued to add that once the Express fiber construction was deployed and optimized, the speed in which it took to reach key financial cities such as Chicago, Toronto and Frankfurt would also be faster. Additionally, to ensure a flexible and state-of-the-art submarine network build, Express would be lit with 40G technology, which can then be upgraded to 100G as and when required.

Mike Saunders, vice president of Business Development for Hibernia Atlantic, was excited to begin construction of the first phase, which included constructing a new cable from the County of Somerset in the U.K to Halifax in Canada. This in turn would connect to Hibernia’s current, low latency cable from Halifax to New York.

Saunders added in a statement that they would build keeping in mind future expansion that included branching units for additional latency enhancements to the United States and continental Europe.

This new build is expected to be completed in the summer of 2012. Hibernia Atlantic has already secured its first new customers on the cable. Details of Project Express is available at the Website.

Hibernia Atlantic is the only American-owned, diverse transatlantic high bandwidth connectivity provider and is a subsidiary of Columbia Ventures Corporation and owned by both CVC and Constellation Ventures Partners.

Huawei Marine Networks Co., Ltd is a joint venture established by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd (News - Alert). and Global Marine Systems Ltd., and provides highly reliable, cost-effective solutions and end-to-end service.

In a related news release, Hibernia Atlantic, the only diverse transatlantic high bandwidth connectivity provider, announced that the company has experienced an increase in global financial firms and exchanges utilizing Hibernia's Global Financial Network for transatlantic low latency connectivity.


Mini Swamy is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jaclyn Allard