Huawei Marine having a busy month

The Marine division of Chinese vendor Huawei is having a busy January. In the past few days, they’ve begun a survey for one submarine cable, finalized a survey and begun manufacturing the cable for another submarine cable, and launched a third. Each of those is much more fun then banging heads with western politicians over fears of undue Chinese government influence.

 

In the Tasman straights, Huawei Marine and Axin Limited took the next step toward building a new link between Australia and New Zealand by finalizing a survey agreement. The Optikor system, which we heard about in September, will connect Sydney with both the North and South Islands with two fiber pairs, an initial capacity of 120Gbps, and an eventual 6.4Tbps. But first there is a survey to complete.

 

Over in the Atlantic, Huawei Marine has moved on from the survey work to the task of actually manufacturing the cable and gear for Hibernia Atlantic’s Project Express.

 

The first new transatlantic cable to be announced in a decade, Project Express hopes to be king of the transatlantic low latency hill. It will extend 4600km from the UK to Nova Scotia, consist of four fibre pairs, and initially feature 40G technology that will be upgradable to 100G.

 

And back on the other side of the planet, Huawei Marine announced the launch of the BATAM-DUMAI-MELAKA Cable System, which connects three islands in Indonesia and Malaysia. They had to bury that one three meters deep across the Strait of Malacca, one of the busiest shipping lanes on the planet, and crossing three existing cables.