• Southern Cross gets ready to be first submarine cable operator to offer 800Gbit/s across the Pacific

Sydney, Australia – Southern Cross, Australasia’s independent specialist international capacity provider, is planning to deploy Ciena's (NYSE: CIEN) industry-leading WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) technology as a key part of the Southern Cross (SX) NEXT expansion plans from Sydney to Los Angeles. The use of WL6e technology in NEXT will allow the implementation of 800 Gb/s wavelengths across the single 12,500+km span, providing reliable, energy efficient, and high bandwidth connections to support offerings such as the recently launched 400GbE services from Southern Cross.

“We have a long-standing history with Ciena, and their strong history of innovation and deep understanding of our business needs have continued to be instrumental to our success. SX NEXT cable is a high-performance system and the first phase of the replacement of the original systems by 2030. Today, we’re once again announcing what is expected to be another networking world first, implementing Ciena WaveLogic 6 on SX NEXT to help us push the envelope in terms of high-speed bandwidth connectivity and energy efficiency,” said Laurie Miller, President and CEO, Southern Cross.

Ciena’s WL6e integrates new coherent DSP innovations to provide the highest capacity over fiber. WL6e supports 1.6 Tb/s single-carrier wavelengths for metro networks, 800 Gb/s services across the longest links, a 50% reduction in watts per bit, and requires less space compared to the previous generation for similar capacities. Ciena’s technology enables Southern Cross’ network to more quickly respond to fluctuating and often unforeseen network demands driven by cloud-based services, content, and emerging applications that use artificial intelligence.

“The Southern Cross NEXT cable is key to the transpacific cable ecosystem, contributing to improved network performance across the Pacific region – all on top of Ciena GeoMesh Extreme technology. Southern Cross has always looked to Ciena for the latest innovations to gain a competitive advantage. With this upgrade to WL6, Southern Cross will be able to provide customers with unrivalled connectivity, allowing them to enjoy applications and services of up to 800GbE,” said Dino DiPerna, Senior Vice President, Global Research and Development, Ciena.