Southern Cross Cable Network today announced that while 2015 looked to be a year of massive capacity requirements, with the announced arrival plans of internet video streaming providers such as Netflix into Australia and New Zealand, Southern Cross and its resellers were well positioned to meet demand growth.

President  & CEO, Anthony Briscoe, advised that Southern Cross had recently completed live system trials with multiple vendors using 100Gb/s technology, confirming and exceeding Southern Cross’ previous projections of potential capacity for the system.

Mr Briscoe confirmed that while Southern Cross’ had been confident that it’s technology roadmap for 2015 would support a 12 Tb/s capacity potential for the system (up from the current technology potential of 7.8 Tb/s), the trials had confirmed that 14.4Tb/s was achievable, an increase of 85% over current technology, and 20% higher than previous projections.

“To put this in context, this represents a capability of streaming over 700,000 Ultra HD (4K) videos simultaneously, or the download of more than 180 million Blu-Ray discs per month.”

Mr Briscoe said, “The technology improvements are staggering, when you consider that the original potential of Southern Cross was 240 Gb/s back in 2000. Our current potential represents the equivalent of over 58 Southern Cross cable systems being built using the original technology”.

“Couple this with our recent introduction of 100 Gigabit submarine Ethernet Private Line services, a regional first as far as we are aware, and our existing connectivity to key data centres such as Equinix SY1 in Sydney, CoreSite SV1 in San Jose, and WBX in Seattle, we are well positioned to cater for large content provider needs, including 4K streaming”.

“While 2014 was a busy year, undertaking our largest capacity upgrade to date adding 1 Tb/s of lit capacity to the network, confirming our system life extension to 2030, and finalising capacity supply deals with a number of our major customers, indications are that 2015 will not be any less active”.

“Southern Cross first introduced the Ciena 6500 Packet-Optical Platform in 2011 and is currently upgrading its network with Ciena’s powerful new WaveLogic modulation capability and Flexible Grid technologies, to continue to future proof the network and provide a platform to support expanding demand. That critical decision has continued to pay dividends, enabling the transition of the Southern Cross network from 10G optics, to 40G in 2012, to 100G in 2013, and now exceeding our expectations for flexible optical grid capability.”

About Southern Cross

Southern Cross Cable Network provides fast, direct, and secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the heart of the Internet in the USA.

The Southern Cross Cable Network comprises two submarine communications cables which were first commissioned in November 2000 and January 2001 at a cost of USD1.3 billion. They provide Australasian broadband users with international connections to the US West coast where global Internet hubs are located.  In 2001 total installed capacity was 80 Gbps, and in January 2003 the total network was expanded to 480Gbps. Upgrades in 2009 and 2010 increased capacity to 1.2Tbps. The 40G Coherent technology upgrade in 2012 increased total lit capacity to 1.6Tbps with 100G Coherent upgrades further increasing lit capacity to the current 3.6Tbps during 2014.

The Southern Cross Cable Network is owned by Spark NZ (50%), Singtel-Optus (40%) and Verizon Business (10%).

Southern Cross Cable Network has offices in Bermuda, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington.  For more information visit Southern Cross at:  http://www.southerncrosscables.com

About Ciena
Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with its OPⁿ architecture for next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment. For updates on Ciena news, follow us on Twitter @Ciena or on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/company/ciena. Investors are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website at www.ciena.com/investors, where we routinely post press releases, SEC filings, recent news, financial results, and other announcements. From time to time we exclusively post material information to this website along with other disclosure channels that we use.

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