TransAtlantic 40 Gig Waves

Fri Aug 14 21:11:09 UTC 2009

> 
> > Well, the funny thing is that when I approached bandwidth buyers at
> > some well known publicly traded carriers, they told me that 40 gig
> > waves across the Atlantic were impossible.
> 
> Theoretically impossible, or just "impossible on the fiber that's
> already underwater"? Big difference there.
> 
> > Indeed, when we decided to launch LAN PHY 10 GigE, the builder of our
> > cable system told us it wasn't possible.
> 
> Again, was this "impossible on a cable the builder was about to build",
> or "impossible on the cable that the builder put under the water
> already"?

1) 40G across large bodies of water is a nice achievement, kudos to everyone involved everywhere.

2) Even on cables that are already deployed where impossible things couldn't happen, have. It just takes a little longer for the technology involved. Case in point, I point to DSL over legacy (old) copper plants. Even super old fiber in the ground can do things that were originally considered impossible. 

For existing undersea systems (whomever owns them) inline amplifiers as well as cable issues need to be ironed out. Now that folks know the cost of rolling out a new cable vs the cost of engineering specialized solutions for those sorts of spans, they have decisions to make...  but I have (and it has been proven) faith in technology to the impossible works... it just takes some time. :) 25Ghz spacing wasn't possible 5 years ago either. And there is hfDWDM spacing in labs somewhere too.

So other than for the folks that are provisioning 40G or who are considering deploying their own systems... what's the big deal?

Deepak