Regional club cable APCN2 is about to increase capacity by up to four times by adding fresh 40Gbps wavelengths.
APCN2’s 14 telco investors have contracted NEC, the original supplier of the cable, to carry out the upgrade, NEC announced Wednesday.
The 19,000-km cable, which lands at ten points between Japan and Singapore, went into service in 2001.
NEC said the “multi million-dollar” expansion would be the first 40Gbps DWDM upgrade to a large-scale subsea cable.
The cable was built using 10Gbbps wavelengths, NEC said, adding that the current upgrade could increase bandwidth “by as much as four times” to its original design capacity of 2.56Tbps.
The upgrade is scheduled to be completed by 2Q of 2011.
APCN2’s owners are: AT&T, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, KDDI, Korea Telecom, NTT Com, PLDT, Reach, SingTel, Softbank Telecom, StarHub and TM.
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