By Developing Telecoms, James Barton

A new superfast submarine cable link has been launched between Israel and Italy. Bezeq International and Alcatel-Lucent have partnered on the high-speed optical fibre system, which is named ‘Jonah’ and spans 2,300 kilometres across the Mediterranean. The link is intended to address the growing demands of the highly dynamic Israeli telecom market, which shows one of the highest household broadband and mobile penetration rates in the world.

The new link is the first high-speed submarine cable system fully owned by an Israeli operator. It can operate at 100 gigabits-per-second data transmissions to enable data capacity of 7.6 Terabits-per-second (Tbps) between Tel Aviv and Bari, Italy. This ultimate capacity could allow the simultaneous download of 100,000 MP3 files in one minute and the streaming of 15,000 HDTV channels.

Isaac Benbenisti, Chief Executive Officer of Bezeq International, said: “This new advanced high-speed Submarine Cable System ‘JONAH', demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the development of our communication infrastructure and sets new standards of performance and service for our Israeli as well as global customers.”

Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks SAS, said: “The new ‘JONAH' system will bring faster connectivity to the Mediterranean, offering the speed and capacity needed to unlock the potential to deliver innovative, IP-based services to meet the demanding requirements of subscribers in the region”.

The system integrates Alcatel-Lucent OALC-5 cable, optimised with coherent submarine fibre (CSF), repeaters and the 1620 Light Manager (LM) submarine line terminal which is designed to accommodate 10G/40G/100G wavelengths in the same platform, enabling seamless capacity upgrade on flexible grid for channel spacing without traffic interruption.

More info:

http://www.bezeqint.net/