- Ciena coherent optics will be deployed in a new Caribbean subsea cable line
- The system is capable of a total capacity of more than 650 Tbps
- Ciena is a key player in the subsea terminal equipment market
The Caribbean is about to get a lot more underwater fiber cables. Trans Americas Fiber System (TAFS) has tapped Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme technology to deploy a new subsea cable system connecting Central America and the Caribbean directly to the U.S.
The TAM-1 cable, which spans 7,200 kilometers across two diverse routes, was built with a total system capacity of more than 650 Tbps across 24 fiber pairs southbound and 12 northbound. According to TAFS, the subsea network was built to support increased bandwidth demands for AI, 5G, edge computing and other services in the region.
Construction of TAM-1 began in September 2023, with commercial operation now expected to begin on the northern route in Q4 2025. AT&T will be the anchor tenant and landing party in all U.S. jurisdictions. TAFS is also plotting a potential expansion that crosses into the Pacific Ocean.
Ciena is a major player in subsea fiber optics, so it’s not surprising to see its coherent optics put to work. Dell’Oro VP Jimmy Yu told Fierce Ciena, with its 1.6 Tbps-capable transponder, has an estimated 60% market share in submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE).
“The benefit of using the latest technology in a submarine cable is the ability to deliver the best spectral efficiency, thereby optimizing the amount of data traffic that can be carried on each fiber strand,” he said.
The subsea cable market
A Ciena spokesperson touted the company was the first out of the gate to deploy coherent optical transmission for subsea cable systems, and that its customers have seen a “more than 90% reduction in watts/Gbps” in their networks.
Other notable players in the SLTE space include Nokia’s Infinera, Alcatel Submarine Networks (previously owned by Nokia but sold to the French government last year) and Japan-based NEC. Australian telco Telstra is using a combination of Ciena and Nokia gear to add about 200 Tbps of subsea and backhaul capacity.
Ciena is also exploring the use of fiber optic sensing to monitor subsea activity. One obvious use case would be to detect fiber cuts, whether they’re intentional or accidental.
And subsea cable damage is indeed on the rise. Recent Red Sea cuts in September resulted in internet outages across Asia and the Middle East and latency spikes for cloud providers like Azure and Akamai.