Feb 1, 2011 12:50 PM,

Submarine cable upgrade supports Verizon's global mesh network

By Joan Engebretson

Equipment from Ciena and Alcatel-Lucent enables upgrade from 10 Gb/s to 40 Gb/s on the Sea-Me-We 4 cable

An upgrade to the Sea-Me-We 4 submarine cable from 10 Gb/s to 40 Gb/s announced today will help support consortium member Verizon’s global mesh network, Verizon Director of Global Network Planning Steve Misencik told Connected Planet.

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Verizon will use dedicated wavelengths on the network, which interconnects Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, Misencik explained. “We put them [the wavelengths] into our global mesh or break them down for MPLS or IP services,” Misencik said.

Verizon’s mesh strategy sets the company apart from any other carrier on the globe, said Misencik. By using dedicated wavelengths on the submarine cable, which are not shared with any other carrier, Verizon essentially has built a private mesh network.

“You could think of it as a dedicated mesh to Verizon.” Misencik explained. “We have seven- or eight-wave diversity across the Atlantic using seven or eight submarine cables. It allows us to switch capacity around outages and predict latency in outage and non-outage situations.”

Those capabilities, Misencik said, are a big benefit for international customers that rely on low-latency and excellent uptime.

Verizon is the only U.S. carrier in the Sea-Me-We network consortium, which also includes Bharti Airtell, France Telecom, SingTel, Tata Communications, Telecom Italia, and 10 other carriers.

Ciena and Alcatel-Lucent roles

The Sea-Me-We network upgrade uses equipment from Alcatel-Lucent and Ciena. As Tom Mock, senior vice president of marketing and communications for Ciena explained, Ciena is providing the switching equipment at 16 landing stations and the optical equipment for a 100 Gb/s terrestrial link between Suez and Alexandria that also is part of the network. Alcatel-Lucent is supplying the optical equipment for the undersea portion of the network.

The switching equipment that Ciena is supplying uses optical transport network technology. “We’re seeing OTN switching begin to replace SDH in big global backbone networks,” Mock said.

Carriers in the Sea-Me-We consortium will be able to use the switches “as a gateway to pack traffic into the network and to use as a protection device in the event of failure in any part of the network,” said Mock.

The Sea-Me-We win is the second announced for Ciena’s 5430 ActivFlex switching system.