companies to design their networks and use the highspeed bandwidth along with a diverse network design that will deliver communications directly into New York, closer than most other trans-Atlantic cables that connect directly to Ireland. The AEC cable is the cable that can do this. The bandwidth hungry companies in Ireland who demand diverse high-speed bandwidth services, will now have the AEC cable and the cables being delivered by Hibernia Networks and Arctic Fibre to provide their capacity and high-speed requirements directly to the US. These three cables along with the other existing submarine cables, CeltixConnect and Hibernia Atlantic, will enable Ireland to become a high bandwidth high capacity network capable of delivering capacity from Europe to the west coast and east coast of the US and specifically to Asia with Arctic Fibre. However, this does not finish here. The Ireland-France Submarine cable is a new development from some of the Arctic Fibre shareholders
through a new entity, IrelandFrance Subsea Cable Limited, which will build a link directly into Europe – into Europe via France. As the cable will connect Cork to Lannion, it will deliver high bandwidth with a design capacity of multiple Tb/s with low latency, directly into France, bypassing the UK. This will enable quick access to the European markets, negating the need to go via the UK. This new cable will deliver access from Paris or Berlin to Tokyo or London directly via Cork. But the ability to reach Tokyo and the Asian markets from this cable will help Cork and Ireland to become a new European hub for high bandwidth service, which will help deliver the capacity needed to feed the growing economies of Ireland, the UK and Europe by have directly connected cables to London, Lannion-Paris, Seattle and Tokyo. Ireland is re-entering the world of international communications. Once it was the gateway to the world in the telegraphic era, now with the development
of these new international superfast submarine cables Ireland is again becoming the international gateway in the new high-speed optical communication era. The availability of high-speed, low latency international links between Ireland and the world is here!
Derek Cassidy is from Dublin, Ireland. He has worked for 23 years in the telecommunications industry of which 21 years have been spent dealing with optical terrestrial systems and submarine networks. He works for BT in their Networks and Optical Engineering division. He is Chairman of the Irish Communications Research Group, a voluntary organisation dedicated to the promotion, protection and research of Ireland’s communication heritage. He is a Chartered Engineer with the IET and is also a member of the IEEE and Engineers Ireland, and has Degrees in Physics/Optical Engineering, Structural/ Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Design and has Masters Degrees in Structural, Mechanical, Forensic Engineering and Optical Engineering. He is currently researching the Communication History of Ireland and is doing a PhD research programme in the field of Optical Engineering.