NTT announced on Wednesday the completion of PC-1 network upgrade, with 100G per wavelength, boosting the total capacity of PC-1 network to 8.4 Tbps. PC-1 network becomes the first 100G trans-pacific submarine cable system, with a span of more than 9500 km connecting Tokyo and California.

In October 2011, the PC-1 network trialed the first transmission of a 100 GbE client service carried across the Pacific, using 40 Gb/s optical channels with Infinera’s FlexCoherent transmission. The success of this trial was based on Infinera’s commercially available 40 Gb/s optical line module and 100 GbE client interface on Infinera’s DTN platform. It also demonstrated the first realization of a 100 Gb/s optical channel using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) with soft decision forward error correction (SD FEC) that will be available in the future on Infinera’s DTNX platform.

After this upgrade, it is expected that NTT will upgrade its IP backbone between Japan and the USA with 100GE links. It will probably drive down the prices for IP transit and capacity in Asia and Hong Kong markets.