Equinix Plans 3,000 Mile Atlantic Cable Route

Equinix is laying down a subsea Atlantic fibre optic cable route that will hook up New York and London, in partnership with AquaComms, an Irish transatlantic network builder.

Equinix’s New York and London data centres will serve as carrier-neutral access points for AquaComms’ subsea route, and the firms say that the new connection will tap into latency benefits to increase economic opportunities in the two cities.

High capacity

“Responding to the demand AquaComms is seeing for high capacity, high reliability connectivity between North America and Europe, we made a strategic decision to deploy with Equinix,” said AquaComms COO Greg Varisco.

Spanning across the Atlantic between Long Island, NY and the west coast of Ireland, with branching units in place for future expansion, the cable route stretches over 3,300 miles.

Called AEConnect (America Europe Connect), the route is one of the first subsea cables between New York City and London in nearly 15 years, and should be operational before the year is out.

This new bilateral submarine connectivity gives both Equinix and AquaComms’ customers yet another choice for driving business advantage in today’s global economy,” said Jim Poole, Equinix’s vice president in the global service providers department.

The news comes as Equinix opened new data centres in both London and New York earlier this year.

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