Farice Lights Up Third Submarine Cable System, ‘IRIS,’ with Ciena

Farice, the main provider of international capacity from Iceland to mainland Europe, is leveraging Ciena's (NYSE: CIEN) GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics, to support its recently launched IRIS cable system connecting southwest Iceland to Galway, Ireland, with onward connectivity to the UK, Denmark, and the Nordics.

IRIS Cable System & Farice Network, Source: Farice

The 1,700km submarine cable is the third to connect Iceland to Europe, providing a diverse, high-capacity pathway for traffic flowing between the regions. The redundancy offered by IRIS and Farice’s other submarine systems—FARICE-1 and DANICE—significantly increases network service availability, a critical requirement in today’s increasingly connected society.

Iceland’s unique geological composition has helped the country become a world leader in clean energy and a pioneer in geothermal technology, attracting multinational corporations, tier 1 and 2 service providers, and data center operators alike because of low electricity costs and renewable energy sources.

The IRIS cable system, which went live on March 1, is a six-fiber pair trunk delivering 22Tb/s per fiber pair, for a total capacity of 132Tb/s, at 500Gb/s line rates.

For IRIS, Farice deployed Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics, and Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller. Ciena Services provided consulting, systems integration, training, and optimization—and will perform maintenance services to ensure the network continues to operate at peak performance.

Additionally, Ciena assisted Farice with upgrading terrestrial routes in Iceland for IRIS and DANICE to a protected ring system with a fast restoration using a ROADM-based GeoMesh Extreme architecture; DANICE was also updated to WaveLogic 5 Extreme coherent optics.