NEC Corporation has been contracted by Seren Juno Network Co., Ltd., to build a trans-Pacific subsea fibre-optic cable.
Known as the “JUNO Cable System”, the cable will provide network connectivity between California in the USA, to Chiba and Mie prefecture in Japan, spanning 10 000km. NEC expects that the cable project should be completed by the end of 2024.
Although most subsea cables are composed of 16 fibre pairs, NEC claimed that the company’s newly developed energy efficient repeaters and Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) technology will allow NEC to adapt 20 fibre pairs in a trans-Pacific subsea fibre-optic cable.
Strengthening Connectivity between the Asia-Pacific and North America
NTT Ltd Japan Corporation, PC Landing Corp. Mitsui & Co., and JA Mitsui Leasing, Ltd., established Seren Juno Network Co., Ltd., earlier in July 2022 to manage the entire JUNO project, from planning and construction to sales and operations.
In a press release statement, Seren and NEC affirmed that the JUNO cable underscored Japan’s role as a “data hub” in the Asia-Pacific region, and promoted the development of digital economies, to support strong demand for communications. Furthermore, NEC noted that JUNO’s provision of communication routes from two separate locations in Japan to the US will create a cable system that is resilient to natural disasters in the coastal areas of Japan.
In addition, the JUNO cable’s Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS) function will allow the system to remotely alter the bandwidth of each route, allowing the cable network to respond flexibly to customers’ business needs and meet changes in communications traffic demand.
JUNO is the latest big subsea cable contract won by NEC.
Earlier in October 2021, Facebook had commissioned NEC to build a “high performance fibre optic cable” connecting the US and Europe. This cable will offer 200 times the capacity of the transatlantic cables of the 2000s, and will connect into the 2Africa cable system connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe.
India had also previously selected NEC to build an optical fibre cable from the coastal city of Kochi to the 11 islands of Lakshadweep.
As such, NEC is a firm with considerable experience in developing and constructing subsea cables. Once complete, the JUNO cable system will provide a maximum capacity of 350 Tbps, the largest of existing cable systems between the US and Japan.
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