The milestone was achieved over Telxius’ 6,600km Marea submarine cable, linking Virginia Beach in the United States with Bilbao, Spain.
The transmission, powered by Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) optical technology, also delivered a record-setting spectral efficiency of 7.0 bits/s/Hz, the highest ever recorded across the Atlantic.
The achievement comes amid a global surge in data centre traffic and AI-driven demand for ultra-high capacity networks.
“We are committed to continually upgrading our network with new and enhanced systems to better support our customers,” said Carlos Dasi, CTIO, Telxius.
“With advancements like Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme, deploying more capacity in the most efficient way possible is now a reality.
This latest milestone demonstrates our ability to deliver that capacity across even the vastest of distances in today’s bandwidth-hungry digital economy.”
The Marea cable, one of the highest-capacity subsea cables in the world, is jointly owned by Telxius, Microsoft, and Meta.
With the integration of WL6e, Telxius reinforces its position as a leading provider of global subsea connectivity, responding to the exponential growth in bandwidth demand fuelled by cloud services, video streaming, and AI workloads.
“This achievement with Telxius is the latest in a series of Ciena industry-firsts in coherent optics,” said Thomas Soerensen, VP, global submarine solutions at Ciena.
“WL6e will help Telxius provide high-capacity, diverse, and low-latency routes across the Atlantic, and will enable it to stay ahead of the evolving needs of its customers as demand for AI, content, video, and cloud applications continues to grow.”
Ciena’s WL6e is the industry’s first high-bandwidth coherent transceiver based on cutting-edge 3nm silicon. It promises to halve space and power requirements per bit a critical benefit for submarine operators looking to scale efficiently.
Telxius plans to expand deployment of the technology across selected submarine systems within its global network throughout 2025 and beyond.
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