Pacnet upgrades Trans-Pacific submarine cable

100G coherent technology provides programmable, high-capacity services over 9,600km trans-pacific cable between Japan and U.S. West Coast.

  • Wednesday, 22nd January 2014 Posted 10 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Ciena® Corporation and Pacnet have announced the completion of an upgrade to the company’s trans-Pacific link connecting the U.S. West Coast to Japan. Faced with an exploding market for bandwidth-intensive applications and data center services, Pacnet expanded its network to offer a suite of high-capacity OTN and Ethernet services to meet customer demand while reducing cost-per-bit. In addition, the enhanced programmable 100G network solution allows for bandwidth agility to deliver scalable capacity that is configurable by both enterprise and carrier customers for a high-performance and cloud-ready network.


As a leading provider of integrated technology solutions in the Asia-Pacific region, Pacnet delivers high-performance technology solutions over 46,000 kilometers of submarine cable systems. It manages two of the five fiber pairs on this trans-Pacific cable, which it co-owns with five other global telecom partners.

Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, powered by WaveLogic 3 coherent optical processors, combines advanced digital signal processing with soft-decision forward error correction to achieve reliable performance across long distances. The flexibility of Ciena’s WaveLogic 3 technology gives Pacnet the ability to extend its network reach without straining performance.

In addition, Ciena’s WaveLogic 3-based submarine solution is equipped with integrated test capabilities that provide Pacnet with critical information about its network health, capacity and resilience, allowing it to leverage network resources efficiently and proactively without complex and expensive external testing gear.

With Ciena’s OneControl Unified Management System, Pacnet has a complete view of its network performance and can provide streamlined service activation, fault management and remote troubleshooting. OneControl’s ability to isolate the precise location of a fiber fault is significant, especially with the complexity of repairing a network disruption on cables in the extreme conditions of the Pacific Ocean.

By applying Ciena’s OPn architecture for programmable network infrastructures that deliver much lower cost-at-scale, Pacnet can also provide fast and efficient service provisioning and turn-up.

Ciena is also providing a range of professional services for this deployment via its Specialist Services portfolio, including consulting, test and turn-up assistance.