Colt opens low-latency route from Dublin to London /Alcatel-Lucent to supply 100G SLTE for GlobeNet connection to Colombia

European network services provider Colt says its new network route from Dublin to London is online. The route offers improved resilience, lower costs, and “the fastest possible speed” between Ireland and mainland Europe, Colt asserts.

Colt is quoting latency of 4.267 ms between Colt nodes in London and Dublin, with connectivity up to 10 Gbps. Colt says it currently carries over 500 Gbps of traffic across the Irish Sea. The new Dublin-London link extends Colt’s total capacity between the two cities to 4.8 Tbps.

The new route, which is part of Colt’s wider strategic network investment plan for Europe, incorporates the new Sea Fibre Networks cable, CeltixConnect, which is based on the Infinera DTN platform.

Colt says it’s not done in Ireland. The service provider also has an extension from Dublin to Cork on its roadmap, with completion of this new connection expected toward the end of this year.

In addition to supplying connectivity to financial services firms, Colt says it counts the majority of multinationals based in Ireland with network services. It provides last-mile fiber to more than 250 locations in Dublin, according to Gary Keogh, director, Colt Ireland.

“Ireland is an exciting place for Colt because of the enormous success of its ICT sector which continues to grow, particularly in the Dublin area,” said Keogh. Our continued investment here will ensure Ireland remains right at the heart of Europe’s network infrastructure and the location of choice for large enterprises across a number of sectors.”



Submarine capacity supplier GlobeNet, a subsidiary of Brazil’s Oi, will use optical transport equipment from Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) in its recently announced project to link Colombia to its existing undersea fiber optical network (see “GlobeNet undersea cable route to link Colombia and Miami”). The equipment will provide GlobeNet the ability to support 100-Gbps wavelengths over the new 1000-km route, which will serve the need for broadband services between Colombia, the United States, and other Latin American countries.

Alcatel-Lucent will supply an integrated 100G-capable wet plant of cable and high-bandwidth repeaters, power feed equipment, and its 1620 Light Manager (LM) submarine line terminal equipped with coherent technology. The ultimate design capacity of the route will be more than 8 Tbps “on each connectivity path,” according to GlobeNet and Alcatel-Lucent.

The GlobeNet submarine cable system currently spans 22,000 km with landing points in Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza in Brazil, Maiquetía in Venezuela, St. David’s in Bermuda, Boca Raton in Florida, and Tuckerton in New Jersey. The new extension will land on Colombia’s Atlantic coast.

Said Erick W. Contag, GlobeNet’s COO, “GlobeNet is committed to meeting the need for high-quality capacity to offer an improved experience for all of our customers. Our collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent is based on our confidence in the low latency, reliability, and speed of their solution, as well as their ability to seamlessly and efficiently introduce this extension to Colombia while maintaining all our existing network services.”