10 November, 2011

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (tokyo:6503) announced today that it has signed a contract to upgrade a transpacific submarine cable network by incorporating 40 Gbps dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) and increasing transmission design capacity up to fivefold to 5.2 Tbps. The upgrade to the Asia America Gateway (AAG) Cable Network, which will involve installing submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE) in eight countries, is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2012.

The AAG Cable Network, a 10 Gbps DWDM system set up in 2009, is owned by a consortium of nineteen major telecommunications carriers and comprises over 20,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cable linking 10 landing stations located in seven Southeast Asian countries and the United States.

To satisfy the rapid increase in demand for internet traffic, there has been urgent need to raise transmission capacity and speed. A field trial conducted on the AAG Cable Network has proved that Mitsubishi Electric’s new high-speed fiber-optic technology, called coherent technology, enables 40 Gbps DWDM transmissions beyond 6,600 kilometers, which was one of the key factors underpinning the upgrade contract.