CANADIAN ORGANIZATIONS NEEDING a 100 Gbps low-latency link to Europe have a new option with the launch of service last month for its new CDN$400 million undersea cable between Halifax and Britain.
Dublin, Ireland-based Hibernia Networks, which owns and operates a global communications network connecting North America, Europe and Asia, said its Express sub-sea cable service has round-trip latency between New York City and London of 58.95 milliseconds, more than 6 ms faster than Level 3 Communications' link between the two cities.
It's also at least 10 ms faster than Hibernia's older sub-sea cables between the two continents.
In an interview Al DiGabriele, the company's senior vice-president of products and marketing, said five levels of service are offered on Express, with the highest tier (Ultra Low) aimed at public and private financial trading companies that need the lowest latency possible.
The Ultra 2 service links New York City and London, and Chicago and Frankfurt. Organizations needing "slightly slower" latency, such as content providers, Internet service providers and carriers, could buy the lower tier Ultra 3 service.
DiGabriele wouldn't divulge pricing
He did say, however, there are already early Canadian customers for Express, which he wouldn't name. But the company has said Microsoft Corp. and Zayo Group of Colorado, which sells dark fiber, mobile infrastructure, and cloud and connectivity services are already on board.
"I think there's quite a sizeable opportunity in Canada," he added. "The cable lands directly in Halifax, so there's no need for Canadian networks to connect transborder (from the U.S.)… Number two, there's a definite trend for large multinational companies to move a lot of their data centre business into Canada. I know Microsoft I expanding heavily and expanding their Azure (cloud) platform there, and then one of the largest financial centres is in Toronto."
Hibernia also has a terrestrial network that runs from Halifax to Moncton, N.B., then Montreal and eastwards, and from Boston.
The 4,600 km Express cable achieves its low latency in part because it follows a Great Circle route – the shortest and most direct possible – between the continents. By comparison the older Hibernia North cable curves in an "S" from Halifax, goes around the top of Ireland and lands in Manchester, while Hibernia South goes almost straight east before curving up to Dublin.
DiGabriele said Hibernia Express is the first new undersea cable between the continents since Apollo Submarine Cable System Ltd. built one some 12 years ago.
Hibernia says six-pair fiber on the Express cable system uses Corning Inc.'s EX2000 pure silica core fiber to achieve the sub-60ms transatlantic latency. There's also redundancy to eliminate a single point of failure. It also uses advanced DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing technology) to enabling 100Gbps speeds across the ocean. Service of up to 200Gbps is available between Dublin and London.
The company also says Express cable could be upgraded to 400 Gbps in the future.
Because the Express line's route goes over a lot of the shallow continental shelf on both sides of the ocean, half of its length is buried and armored.
In addition to the financial and service provider markets, DiGabriele also said Hibernia is also going after broadcasters who need speed and quality of service during live telecasts.
