Submarine Cables by Niall Toh

1. Submarine Cable
Unity Cable
APG Cable
Future Technology Roadmap
November 2013, Kuala Lumpur
Niall Toh

2. Agenda
• Unity Cable
• How Unity revolutionalise Submarine Cable
• The importance of a PoP to PoP cable
• Cable Fault and Restoration
• APG Cable
• APG Model and its coverage
• Advantage and disadvantage of a cable like APG
• Future Submarine Cable Technology Roadmap
• How it benefits the Community

3. 3

4. Unity Cable System
Trans-Pacific
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5. 5

6. UNITY
• Unity Cable – leading the revolution of the Pop to Pop cable build
• Carrier neutral city pops like Equinix and One Wilshire
• First hybrid cable system that does not have an incumbent carrier
roadmap
• Moving away from the legacy C&MA towards a more liberal
arrangement
• Benefit of upgrade roadmap
• Technology not tied to legacy carrier interfaces
• Advantage of Ethernet interface (Unity is the first to offer LAN-PHY as default
built in the Trans-Pacific)
• Upgrade windows
• Capacity Entitlement and technology roadmap
• Most important, a Cable with the DNA not to be hold hostage at a
Cable Station

7. Unity USTN
Modesto
Palo Alto
San Jose
Los Angeles
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8. Question: What happen when there
is a cable cut; cable fault; or dry
plnat failure?
Redundancy and Restoration
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9. KDDI New
Chikura
Unity Japan Inter Link (JIL)
A new Trans-Pacific system
Softbank
Maruyama
KDDI Chikura
(Shin-Maruyama)
TPE
CUCN
JUS/
JUCN
C2C
APCN2
UNITY
AJC
SJC
APG

10. 10

11. APG Cable
• Effectively this is APCN3 with a twist – Why not a ring cable?
• No more expensive self healing ring
• No more redundant transponders
• First D+ fibre Submarine Cable in the world
• 100G and future 200G and 400G technology ready
• Utilises OADM BU for more effective traffic routing
• 55Tbps Design Capacity
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12. Demand for Linearity – Mesh Network
Intra-Asia Bandwidth Supply and Demand, 2008-2012 (Tbps)
Source: TeleGeography
© 2013 PriMetrica, Inc
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13. What Has Changed – from telco centric to
user centric………..
• Submarine Cable Systems/Networks are not a lot more Ethernet
friendly
• Line side interface are now software configurable between SDN and
LAN-PHY
• LAN-PHY is Ethernet as it is a 10GE port
• Now also available in the market are 10G and 100G interfaces
• Of course, there are also some legacy technology like 40G that are
not very Ethernet friendly
• There are even now products that enables seamless subsea and
terrestrial connectivity, eliminating the needs to have an additional
transponder that sits at the cable station. This will substantially
lower the cost while improves latency.
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14. Ethernet capability
• Most cable systems in both the Trans-Pacific and Intra-Asia are now
Ethernet enabled
• Even the older systems that already upgraded beyond 10G most
likely support LAN-PHY
• LAN-PHY has become a sweet spot for Ethernet users on
submarine cables
• This is mainly driven by the user profile changed in some of the
major segments, including Trans-Atlantic; Trans-Pacific and IntraAsia
• OTT are now probably the largest submarine cable capacity users
today and they are the drivers for change to Ethernet.
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15. Submarine Cable Future Roadmap
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16. Submarine Cable Technology Roadmap
• ROADM Branching Unit
• Spectra efficiency (wavelength and spectrum evolution)
• BPSK; QPSK; 8QAM; 16QAM……………
• Improvement in spectrum from 100GHz – 50GHz – 37.5GHz – 33GHz – 25GHz
• Higher Q value
• Better FEC Gain
• Hollow Core Fibre
• Evolution in these technology transform the cost of carrying traffic
• More traffic, less cost, lowering of unit cost
• Currently already available 100G interface on Ethernet from subsea
• There are also available seamless terrestrial and subsea technology
already available
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17. While fiber evolution is at it optimal /
stagnation,
The secret will be in the
electronics………..
How many more lights you can
squeeze into an existing fiber?
Reach? Cable distant? Repeater
span?
And not losing quality……. OSNR?
Q Value?.........
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18. An example of how future technology can improve
capacity gain
• Utilizing D+ Fiber which currently is the best fiber for digital coherent
technology, submarine cable can benefit and utilize the next
generation 100G & 400G transponders
• With improved features such as FEC or Nonlinearity compensation,
the new design submarine cables can now support upgrades with
next generation transponders that increase the design capacity as
shown below:
* The gain will depend on the distant of the DLS where a shorter DLS will have
even higher gain. An Intra-Asia system vs a Trans-Pacific system
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19. In Another Word……………
Higher Spectral Efficiency by Denser Packing
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20. 20

21. An example of how future technology provide security
and robustness to submarine cable
• Single end power feed of upto 10,000km distant
• Recovery of unaffected traffic during cable fault
Below is an example how a OADM BU with an optical by-pass
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22. Malaysia as a fiber hub
• Probably still No but it is a step closer
• To be a hub, a country needs to have large number of cables
landing
• The diversity of the cable, not just regions and coverage but
ownership
• An open country where cables are easily accessible from a city PoP
rather than cable station
• Not heavily regulated market
• With new non incumbent cables landing in Malaysia certain a step
forward
• Not to the extent of being a hub but definitely level playing field
• Prices will be market driven and certainly
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23. Thank you
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