Aqua Comms DAC, the operator of Ireland's first dedicated subsea fibre-optic network interconnecting New York, Dublin and London, has announced plans for continued investment in submarine cable infrastructure having joined the HAVFRUE consortium which will own and operate a new subsea cable system connecting New Jersey to Ireland, and Denmark, with connectivity options to Norway.
The HAVFRUE subsea cable is the first new undersea cable traversing the North Atlantic to connect mainland Northern Europe to the US in nearly two decades. Aqua Comms is the appointed system operator and landing party in the US, Ireland, and Denmark. TE SubCom has been selected as supplier for the system on which route survey operations have begun. The projected Ready-for-Service (RFS) date for the HAVFRUE subsea cable is Q4 2019.
Aqua Comms will market and sell capacity services and raw spectrum on its portion of the HAVFRUE cable system under the brand name America Europe Connect-2 (AEC-2) as complementary to its existing transatlantic cable, America Europe Connect-1 (AEC-1), running between New York and Killala in County Mayo, Ireland. Aqua Comms is also concluding a new cable route to Denmark through the UK, developing CeltixConnect-2, which connects Dublin to Manchester, as well as the North Sea Connect cable that will link Stellium's data centre / center in Newcastle, England, to Esbjerg, Denmark.
Combining these new subsea cable developments, the build of the HAVFRUE / AEC-2 cable system, together with existing systems owned and operated by Aqua Comms, will create a resilient, ring-based infrastructure between the East Coast of the US, Ireland, and Northern Europe.
The HAVFRUE / AEC-2 infrastructure network services will be delivered to and from modern, high-reliability, carrier-neutral interconnection points at NJFX, in Wall, New Jersey, and 1025Connect in Long Island, New York, with a resilient network connection in between, offering a Manhattan bypass route increasing diversity and resiliency in the region. In Europe, the services will be offered from all landing stations and carrier-neutral, metro area Points of Presence (PoPs) in Dublin, London, Amsterdam, and Esbjerg, where the system will more than double fibre connectivity to Denmark, increasing the diversity and reliability of the Internet to the region.
