Equinix and Crosslake Fibre announced that CrossChannel Fibre, a new international fibre-optic cable project, will connect to Equinix data centres in London and Paris. The new system will be delivered by Crosslake Fibre to Equinix’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres, LD4 in London and PA7 in Paris, via landings in Brighton and Veules-les-Roses. cross-channel Fibre will be the first subsea fibre-optic project laid across the English Channel in nearly 20 years and is due to be ready for service in Q4 2021.
Built by Crosslake Fibre and terminating in Equinix data centres, the 520-kilometre build with 96 fibre pairs will be capable of delivering over 20 terabits per fibre pair, with the new network due to be the lowest latency fibre network between London and Paris. The project marks the second collaboration between Crosslake Fibre and Equinix, the first being connectivity between Toronto and Secaucus, New Jersey.
The data centres LD4 and PA7 were selected as landing hubs due to the comprehensive digital ecosystems housed there, including a variety of key business partners such as network service providers (NSPs), cloud service providers (CSPs), and leading companies across the financial services, media and entertainment, gaming and e-commerce industries.
Data traffic is proliferating around the world, and 99 per cent of global transoceanic traffic is being delivered via subsea cables. As global enterprises look to capitalise on business opportunities in Europe, they are finding they also require more capacity to run distributed IT operations at the digital edge, including cloud-based applications.
“We are adding new connection points for subsea cables to increase our vast network reach across the globe,” Eugene Bergen Henegouwen, president of Equinix, said. “Equinix brings global consistency and scale to subsea cable operators, including Crosslake Fibre, for them to connect into multi-tenant facilities to monetise their cable with a diverse set of ecosystems, developing a new business model with a low-latency reach to critical partners. As a result, Equinix customers benefit from an ever-expanding choice of network connectivity, at increasing speeds. Excitingly, this cable marks the first subsea fibre-optic project across the English Channel in nearly 20 years, connecting the UK and France and furthering their advancement as two major growth digital metros.”
