Colin Wallace from Ciena speaks on the benefits of upgrade technology.

“Extending the life of these cables.  Making them more economic.”  He explains that the use of the coherent receiver simplifies the traditional line system, increasing the bandwidth.

One point he makes is that earlier cables required special efforts to compensate for dispersion.  Coherent technology simplifies this by dealing with dispersion at either end of the system, and automatically adjusting if additional fiber is added when repairing a cable.