HKA and ASN sign turnkey contract for trans-Pacific cable system
The Hong Kong-Americas (HKA) consortium and Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) announced they have signed a turnkey contract to build a submarine cable network connecting the U.S. to Hong Kong spanning over 13,000 kilometers.
Dubbed the HKA system, the network will encompass six fiber pairs to boost connectivity from Chung Hom Kok in Hong Kong to Hermosa Beach in California. With a target completion date set for 2020, the open cable system will be made to provide cost benefits as well as bandwidth availability for telecom services between Asia and North America.
The HKA system would demonstrate WSS (wavelength selective switch) ROADM (reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer), providing more than 80 Tbps data transmission capacity. Additionally, it will be compatible with future generations of submarine line terminal equipped with Probabilistic Shaping technology. Among the key players of the KHA consortium include China Telecom, China Unicom, Facebook, Tata Communications and Telstra.
“We are proud to work with the HKA consortium on this project, which incorporates several innovations from ASN and will be based on the latest high-performance submarine line design,” said Philippe Piron, president of Alcatel Submarine Networks.
“The trust placed upon us by the HKA consortium validates our position as a key player for submarine network infrastructures in the Asia-Pacific region and the reinforcement of our local presence. It also provides a strong platform to further demonstrate our commitment in project management and in the development of local relationships to support operators and content providers for their network and capacity expansion strategies.”
The news follows Google announcing last week it is expanding its global infrastructure with the addition of three new submarine fiber-optic cables: a private cable connecting Chile to Los Angeles called Curie; a consortium cable connecting the U.S. to Denmark and Ireland called Havfrue; and a consortium cable interconnecting major subsea communication hubs in Asia called the Hong Kong-Guam Cable system (HK-G). The purpose of the subsea cables is to help the search engine giant better compete with rivals in the cloud computing market like Microsoft and Amazon.
