The Asia-Africa-Europe-1 (AAE-1) Consortium has selected Infinera’s ICE6 coherent 800G solution to significantly enhance its submarine network capacity, more than doubling its current capability to exceed 100 Tbps. This upgrade marks one of the largest submarine capacity increases ever, strengthening connectivity across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Spanning 25,000 kilometers and connecting 19 countries, the AAE-1 cable system offers unparalleled route diversity. It uniquely terminates at two points of presence in Singapore and extends further into Asia via terrestrial routes through Thailand, reaching Vietnam, Cambodia, and Hong Kong. The cable system’s key landing points include carrier-neutral data centers in major hubs such as Telecom House in Hong Kong, Equinix SG3 in Singapore, and InterXion MRS1 in Marseille, France, delivering one of the lowest-latency routes between Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.
Originally designed with 100Gbps technology, the AAE-1 cable system has been in service since June 2017, offering a system capacity of over 40 Tbps across its five fiber-pair trunk. An initial upgrade in 2020 introduced Infinera’s ICE4 technology. The latest enhancement with ICE6 on the GX Series Compact Modular Platform will further optimize spectral efficiency and enable advanced features like long-codeword probabilistic constellation shaping (LC-PCS) and Nyquist subcarriers.
The ongoing upgrade, set to be completed by Q4 2022, will ensure that AAE-1 continues to support robust, high-capacity connectivity for its consortium members, including Djibouti Telecom, which plays a strategic role in linking Africa with global networks.