Australia Japan Cable and Pacific Crossing Limited Announce a Gigabit Ethernet Service Between the US and Australia

SAN FRANCISCO, TOKYO and SYDNEY, Aug. 31 /PRNewswire-Asia/ — To meet the continually growing demand from bandwidth-hungry applications such as high-definition video, Australia Japan Cable (AJC), operator of the AJC cable system between Japan and Australia, and Pacific Crossing Limited (PCL), the operator of the lowest latency network across the Pacific, PC-1, have announced the launch of their Gigabit Ethernet Service for carrier, enterprise, and ISP customers looking for scalable, flexible connectivity options between Australia and North America.

Both companies had announced Gigabit Ethernet offerings on their own networks earlier in the year. “Testing together with AJC was hugely successful and proved our joint capability to deliver an Ethernet service that the industry has come to expect,” said Seth Davis, PCL CTO. “Partnering together, AJC and PCL can offer standard 1Gigabit and 10Gigabit interfaces together with the flexibility of scalable capacity from 150Mbs (STM1) up to the full size of the port interface.”

“The expansion of our Ethernet service to include our partnership with PCL and deliver services all the way to the US is an evolutionary step in our product strategy,” said Chris Kessikidis, AJC’s Commercial Director. “Additionally we have established relationships with Australian backhaul providers enabling the ability to deliver these services all the way to the customer’s premise.”

“For customers our Gigabit offering with AJC provides tremendous flexibility,” said John Garrett, PCL Global Head of Sales. “Customers can have the service installed and then increase capacity up to the port speed (1Gb or 10Gb) overtime without any necessary upgrades to equipment or local access. The money and time saved and the productivity gained by not having to wait for new equipment and install it, or wait for upgrades to local access is huge.”

Testing of the Gigabit service on the AJC and PC1 networks confirmed transmission performance up to the full rate and for frames up to a jumbo size of 9224 bytes.

“While international submarine networks, including AJC, have historically provided connectivity using Protected and Unprotected SDH capacity, there has been a clear trend to migrate Ethernet connectivity from local to national to international,” said Phillip Murphy, AJC’s Head of Engineering. “We are pleased to be working with PCL to provide this solution to the marketplace.”

About Australia Japan Cable

Australia-Japan Cable is a 12,700km optical fibre ring submarine cable network, directly connecting Australia and Japan, via Guam. AJC is equipped with Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology providing 10Gbit/s wavelengths with a design capacity of up to 64 waves per fibre pair. SDH capacity is provided including automatic network protection with ring and span switching in accordance with ITU-T Rec. G.841 MS SPRING in the event of terminal equipment or cable or repeater faults.

The network is equipped to 240Gbit/s with a current capability of over 1000Bit/s enabling further upgrades as required. A collapsed ring configuration is used where the fibre pairs share a common sheath on a historically safe route between branching units in 4000m water depth. Carriers can also use AJC as a diverse cable system to other cables connecting in all landing point locations.

AJC offers an extensive range of products which capacity users can tailor to their individual network requirements inclusive of extensive backhaul options at each landing point. For more information, visit http://www.ajcable.com

About Pacific Crossing Limited

Pacific Crossing owns and operates the trans-Pacific, subsea fibre-optic network ring, PC1, connecting the U.S. and Japan. The 21,000km PC-1 submarine cable system offers the highest reliability and the lowest latency across the Pacific. Supported by extensive backhaul into major U.S. and Japanese cities, Pacific Crossing’s infrastructure offers seamless interconnection to virtually every major international network operator for onward global access. The company delivers state-of-the-art capacity and managed network services at competitive prices to a growing customer base of carriers and media and information transport-intensive enterprise customers. The company is registered in Hamilton, Bermuda, with principal offices in San Francisco in the U.S., and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, please visit: http://www.pc1.com