TE SubCom, the submarine cable business of TE Connectivity, has deepened its relationship with optical transport equipment vendor Ciena. Customers seeking a single point of contact for both wet plant and dry plant will have the option to combine TE SubCom’s advanced wet plant designs and marine installation with Ciena’s 6500 packet-optical platform to create a powerful and flexible next-generation undersea cable system.
The combination of Ciena’s leadership in high-speed optics, and TE SubCom’s leading position in wet plant cable solutions will accelerate the transition toward software-defined submarine networks that offer ultimate capacity and reach, maximum resilience, greater programmability, and lower operating costs, the companies claim.
The partnership is based on TE SubCom’s Open Cables business model, designed to give its customers a broader choice of submarine transceiver equipment suppliers. Since its launch in 2015, TE SubCom has seen an increasing number of cable operators take advantage of its Open Cables business model to choose Ciena equipment.
Taking this approach to the next level, TE SubCom’s Open Cables model will now also provide customers the option of buying a combined solution using fully-qualified Ciena equipment on TE SubCom-designed wet plant. Customers can purchase the entire solution from TE SubCom, benefitting from a single point of contact and guaranteed end-to-end performance, or, they can contract independently with TE SubCom for wet plant and Ciena for transmission equipment.
“Having manufactured our own submarine line termination equipment for decades, we are well aware which technologies are required to efficiently utilize our wet plant system. Ciena produces innovative, flexible and responsive technology that will provide for a fully optimised undersea cable network,” said Aaron Stucki, president of TE SubCom. “The Open Cables model has enabled us to offer our customers options that have never before been available in the undersea cable industry. That model is now further enhanced through this agreement with Ciena, as cable operators wishing to deploy Ciena’s equipment on TE SubCom networks will be able to do so efficiently, with the full support of our engineering team and our commitment to on-time delivery of an end-to-end solution.”
