DUBLIN, IRELAND--(Marketwired - Jan 14, 2016) - Aqua Comms Limited (Aqua Comms), a provider of scalable, subsea capacity-based network solutions, today announces that its America Europe Connect subsea fibre optic cable system is now live and handed over for commercial service to its first customer. AEConnect features the latest technology of 130 x 100 Gbps per fibre pair and is designed to meet the exponential surge in bandwidth demand from carriers, global data centres, financial services companies, and cloud and content providers, including Web-scale providers and Over-the-Top (OTT) companies that require exceptional reliability and performance. One of the first subsea cables constructed between New York City and London in nearly 12 years, the 100G compliant, coherent optimized system is a major advance upon cable systems built at the turn of the 21st century, and will benefit the most from the improvements that coherent technology offers, today and into the future. 

"Envisioned to revolutionize connectivity between North America and Europe, AEConnect, now live, is the most secure transatlantic cable system in existence, providing scalable, low latency and unprecedented, high capacity connectivity across the Atlantic," states Greg Varisco, Chief Operations Officer, Aqua Comms. "This next-generation transatlantic cable system, which is future-proofed against increased capacity requirements, will lower network costs and enable higher, more consistent network performance for end-users. As AEConnect opens for service and hands off to its first client, Aqua Comms would like to thank our partners and anchor customers for their considerable support and confidence, which helped inspire and realize this prodigious accomplishment," Varisco adds.

Highly secure, AEConnect transverses the minimum length of shallow water along the continental shelf on both sides of the Atlantic and avoids major fishing grounds and shipping anchorage areas that are known to expose subsea cables to damage. Additional armoring and deeper burial were also obtained to further mitigate potential vulnerability. In addition to its highly secure routing, AEConnect delivers one of the lowest latency crossings of the Atlantic, projected at a speed of 53.9 milliseconds. 

Spanning more than 5,522 km across the Atlantic, with stubbed branching units for future expansion, AEConnect is a major paradigm shift from legacy systems that were designed for 10G, and in some cases, 2.5G services. As the Submarine Line Terminating Equipment (SLTE) market evolved to coherent technology, AEConnect was designed as a coherent optimized system and will therefore benefit the most from advanced modulation schemes. AEConnect will initially support 13Tbps (130 x 100 Gbps) per fibre pair, however, with the introduction of more advanced modulations, including 8QAM, this will continue to increase. This ensures that global organizations can take advantage of resilient and secure connectivity at predictable costs to leverage economic opportunities across the Atlantic. 

For more information about AEConnect, visit www.AquaComms.com/ or email info@aquacomms.com.

About Aqua Comms Limited 
Aqua Comms Limited (Aqua Comms) is the owner and operator of the transatlantic cable AEConnect and the Irish Sea cable CeltixConnect, and was established to build, acquire or merge with subsea fibre optic cable networks to provide capacity networking solutions to the global media, content providers and IT companies. To learn more about Aqua Comms and its new transatlantic subsea cable system, AEConnect, visit www.AquaComms.com.