Orange Announced Dunant Cable System Ready for Service

Orange announced that the Dunant cable system has been ready for service as of January 19, 2021.  Meanwhile, Orange also announced the signature of a partnership on the AMITIÉ cable, planned to be ready for service at the beginning of 2022.

The Dunant cable landed at Orange's La Parée Préneau cable landing station in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez in March 2020. The Dunant cable system consists of 12 fibre pairs with over 30 Tbps of capacity each, connecting France to Virginia Beach in the United States. Partnered with Google, Orange receives two fiber pairs on the Dunant cable system, on IRU basis. In the US, the Dunant cable system lands at Telxius' Virginia Beach Cable Landing Station. Orange and Telxius have joined force on Dunant cable system, to provide each other with terrestrial backhaul extensions in France and in the US. Orange and Telxius also collaborate to offer co-location services to Google for the Dunant cable system, to provide and operate mutual terrestrial backhaul extensions at their respective Cable Landing Stations in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, France, and Virginia Beach in the US.

The AMITIÉ cable system, invested by a consortium comprising Facebook, Microsoft, Aqua Comms and Vodafone, consists of 16 fiber pairs of up to 23 Tbps of capacity each, to land at Lynn Cable Landing Station, Massachusetts in the US, Bude Cable Landing Station in the United Kingdom, and Le Porge Cable Landing Station near Bordeaux in France. The AMITIÉ cable system planned to be ready for service at the beginning of 2022. Orange will have two fiber pairs on the AMITIÉ cable system.

According to Orange, the Atlantic Ocean is one of the world’s busiest routes in terms of connectivity, with over 80% of internet traffic generated in France coming from the US. The traffic between North America and Europe doubles every two years on average, and this route has supported an unprecedented traffic surge during the first lockdown period of the current Covid pandemic.

Owning capacity on the transatlantic route is therefore strategic to support traffic growth in the coming years. 

With capacity on the two new generation cable systems, Dunant and AMITIÉ, Orange will be able to offer the latest technology, diverse routes and the best latency to its customers once implemented. Furthermore, both cables are designed to evolve at the same pace as future generations of optical transmission technology and will be able to maintain high-level performance for at least the next 20 years.

Orange will benefit from two fibre pairs on both Dunant and AMITIÉ transatlantic cable systems, with a total capacity of up to 100 Tbps, which represents 15 million HD movies downloaded simultaneously. 

Orange is responsible for the French part of Dunant and AMITIÉ cables, as the “landing provider”, and is in charge of the operation and maintenance of the landing stations. With the arrival of the AMITIÉ cable near Bordeaux, the area will transform into a new international digital hub, fostering the implantation of new datacenters to support the region’s digital ecosystem.

Orange will supply land links for both systems from the landing station to Bordeaux and then to Paris and Lyon for one, and will offer capacity between Ashburn, the Datacentre alley and Paris, will the latest Point-to-Point optical transmission technology.

With this reinforced presence on the transatlantic front, Orange now offers a global end-to-end, fully secured connectivity solution between Europe and the United States. With its optical fibre-pairs on two new generation ultra-high-speed cable systems, Orange will serve the consumer, wholesale and business markets in Europe and in America, with a unique, low latency global France – US connectivity solution, performant and redundant.