Orange and EXA hook up new transatlantic subsea cables

Telco group Orange has switched on a new subsea cable connecting the US, UK and France called AMITIE, while EXA has laid down a fifth transatlantic route to its portfolio.

Orange’s new transatlantic route on the impressive sounding mega submarine telecommunications cable is now ready for service, after almost four years of presumably quite damp installation work.

It has a length of 6,800 km, has 16 fiber pairs, and a maximum capacity of 400 Tbps. AMITIE will connect Lynn near Boston in the US Le Porge near Bordeaux in France and Bude in England. It complements its other ‘mega-cable’ called Dunant which launched in January 2021.

Two pairs of optical fibers are present on this new system, which apparently guarantees resilience and continuity of traffic on the transatlantic route.

A rise in ‘digital uses’, particularly those of content providers, has led to strong traffic growth, meaning the North America to Europe route is one of the densest on the planet in terms of connectivity, claims the release – twice as busy as the transpacific route and the second busiest in the world.

The two mega cables will be able to maintain a high level of performance for the next 20 years, we’re told.

“Thanks to the combination of these two mega submarine cables: AMITIE and Dunant, Orange puts France at the heart of intercontinental exchanges, between Europe and the United States, as well as to Asia and Africa, by offering high-performance, fully secure international connectivity to its wholesale and enterprise customers,” said Jean-Louis Le Roux, Director of International Networks and Services at Orange. “In this way, Orange continues to be a major player in the global market, developing its infrastructures to connect France to other continents in a totally secure and environmentally friendly way.”

Meanwhile EXA Infrastructure has also today announced that it has added a fifth transatlantic route to its network footprint. The Dunant cable, which shares its name with Orange’s previously launched cable, connects the US and Europe via a southern corridor across the Atlantic. It connects Paris and Bordeaux in France to the large data centre clusters of Virginia Beach, Richmond and Ashburn in the US.

“The transatlantic is the largest subsea market globally and with the anticipated growth in the market EXA is uniquely positioned to provide our customers with the greatest choice of diversity and availability across our five transatlantic routes,” EXA Infrastructure’s Vice President Network Investments, Steve Roberts, said. “The addition of the Dunant cable to our portfolio, which is 400G and spectrum-ready, accelerates our mission to become the undisputed pan-European and transatlantic data centre-to-data centre connectivity provider.”

The EXA release cites figures from Telegeography, which claim global internet bandwidth has grown by 23% in 2023 so far, with the total internet bandwidth now standing at 1,217 Tbps, representing a 4-year CAGR of 28%.

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