FEATURE
PLCN IS COMING IN-SERVICE IN 2019 BY WINSTON QIU
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ollowing the landing at Deep Water Bay in Hong Kong in March 2018, PLCN landed at Dockweiler Beach in Los Angeles in November 2018. With tremendous efforts from professional teams of PLDC and the PLCN parties, PLCN has achieved one and another milestone. Being the first cable connecting Hong Kong and US directly, the first C+L bands technology enabled submarine cable system in the world and the largest capacity submarine cable across the Pacific Ocean, PLCN is coming in-service in 2019.
PLCN PROJECT UPDATES
Starting from the second half of 2018, PLDC as the major investor, builder, owner and operator of the PLCN cable system, has been keeping the progress of PLCN project transparent. All information about the PLCN project schedules and the most recent updates have been communicated by emails to our key partners and publicly announced at PLDC’s official website. PLDC welcomes network and capacity planners to contact directly for any updates of PLCN
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SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE
project and include PLCN in your product portfolio. By the end of 2018, the manufacturing of all terminal equipment, repeaters and cables for PLCN project have been completed and tested with good quality. The installation of marine cable is going on. The major marine cable installation is conducting with four phases as shown in the following figure. The first phase of 2A segment installation of approximately 1650km cable from shore-end in Los Angeles and westwards has been completed. The installation of 1A segment of about 3700km cable is going on and is expected to be competed in March 2019. The part of 1B/2B segment which is another 8000km of cable has been loaded on board. Last but not least, segment 2C as the final installation, about 1570km of cable across the South China Sea is scheduled to be done in early of the third quarter in 2019. While PLDC sees no obstacles or uncertainties on any permitting issues, PLDC is expecting to launch PLCN cable for commercial service ahead of the current schedule if there will be good weather allowing faster installation.