The Meta-led transatlantic Amitié subsea cable is now ready for operations.
The cable, which spans 6,800km and connects France to the United States, is officially ready to commence service after works were completed in July of this year.
Amitié cable has 16 fiber pairs and a capacity of 400Tbps. The cable lands in the US at Meta subsidiary Edge USA's landing station in Lynn near Boston; in Bude, England; and at an Equinix data center in Bordeaux, France.
Orange operates the Bordeaux landing and owns the parts of the cable up to 22.2km from the coast of France. The telco will be using two of the fiber pairs in the cable. Latency from Bordeaux to New York is 34ms, faster than the existing Google-owned Dunant transatlantic cable which has a latency of 38ms - though both cables have unique routes between the locations which avoids traffic interruption and provides additional redundancy.
Meta is an 80 percent shareholder in Amitié, though partners of the project also include Aqua Comms, Microsoft, and Vodafone which is managing the Bude landing.
There is a branching unit on the cable around 860km from the coast of France and 650km from the UK where owners can switch either individual optical wavelengths or the full fiber capacity between the different landings.
“Thanks to the combination of these two mega submarine cables: Amitié and Dunant, Orange puts France at the heart of intercontinental exchanges, between Europe and the United States, as well as to Asia and Africa, by offering high-performance, fully secure international connectivity to its wholesale and enterprise customers,” said Jean-Louis Le Roux, director of international networks and services at Orange.
“In this way, Orange continues to be a major player in the global market, developing its infrastructures to connect France to other continents in a totally secure and environmentally friendly way.”
The Amitié cable was first announced in 2020 and originally set to go live in 2022. Orange landed the cable in France in 2021, the same year that the Dunant cable went live.
