The FA-1 (FLAG Atlantic 1) is a 14500 transatlantic submarine cable system linking the US, the UK and France. The FA-1 was ready for service in June 2001.
The FA-1 cable system is privately owned and operated by Global Cloud Xchange (formerly FLAG Telecom).
The FA-1 cable system consists of FA-1 North between the US and the UK, and FA-1 South between the US and France with following landing stations:
The FA-1 cable system has six fiber pairs on both FA-1 North and FA-1 South, with initial design capacity of 4.8 Tbps (2x2.4Tbps), based on 10Gbps DWDM technology.
The FA-1 cable system was supplied by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), for a total cost of about US$1.1 billion, inclusive of cost on the terrestrial network connecting cable landing stations in the US and Europe.
In 2013, the FA-1 cable system was upgraded with 100Gbps DWDM technology, using Ciena’s GeoMesh solution.