NEC to build a transatlantic cable

NEC Corporation has been contracted by Facebook to build an ultra-high performance transatlantic subsea fiber-optic cable connecting the USA and Europe.

Until recently, subsea cable was composed of 16 fiber pairs at most, but today, by using NEC's newly developed 24 fiber pair cable and repeaters(1), a system can deliver a maximum transmission capacity of a half Petabit per second, the highest to date for a long distance repeatered optical subsea cable system(2).

International data usage across the Atlantic is expected to expand twenty-fold in the 15 years between 2021 and 2035(3). The region ranks among the highest growth geographies for data traffic demand, bringing ever-greater demands to reduce the cost per bit on subsea cable networks.

NEC has been a leading supplier of submarine cable systems for more than 50 years, and has built more than 300,000 km of cable, spanning the earth nearly 8 times. NEC is well-established as a reliable partner in the submarine cable field as a system integrator that provides all aspects of submarine cable operations, including the manufacture and installation of optical submarine cables and repeaters, provision of ocean surveys and route designs, training and delivery testing. NEC's subsidiary OCC Corporation manufactures subsea optical cables capable of withstanding water pressures at ocean depths beyond 8,000 meters.