APCN-2 Finally Completes its first 40G Upgrade

Tokyo, September 30, 2011 -- NEC Corporation announced today the successful completion of APCN-2 upgrade project, using its state-of-the-air 40Gbps dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology. APCN-2 follows FNAL to become a 40G submarine cable network.

Though NEC still claims the 40Gbps upgrade of APCN-2 is the world's first 40Gb/s dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) capacity upgrade to an existing large scale submarine cable network, frankly speaking, the honor for the first 40G submarine network has gone to Ciena and Reliance Globalcom. On September 6, 2011,  Ciena and Reliance Globalcom announced the completion an upgrade of FNAL submarine network with Ciena's coherent 40G optical networking solution.

It is a pity for NEC. But it is not NEC's fault. It is fault of APCN-2 consortium. It is hard for a consortium to act more effectively than a private cable owner, no exception for the APCN-2 consortium. The APCN-2 purchasing consortium members for this phase of APCN-2 upgarde project include AT&T Services Inc., China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Cable&Wireless Worldwide, KDDI, KT, NTT Com, PLDT, Reach, SingTel, Softbank Telecom, Starhub and TM.

In early July 2010, NEC announced it signed a multi million-dollar contract with APCN-2 consortium to upgrade APCN-2 with 40Gbps DWDM technology, developing the world's first 40Gbps application in a long-distance large scale submarine cable system. While Ciena and Reliance Globalcom have not concluded their 40G submarine network contract by mid of January 2011. Obviously, Reliance Globalcom, as the private owner of the FNAL submarine cable system, progressed much more smoothly on the FNAL 40G upgrade than APCN-2 consortium did. 

APCN-2 and FNAL are both large scale intra-Asia submarine cable systems. No matter which is the first 40G submarine cable network, the completion of 40G upgrades of APCN-2 and FNAL will enable more capacity in Asia region, with saving per Gigabit Capex and Opex. It can be expected that the capacity price will run a further down.