On 13/Jul/20 15:41, Colin Stanners (lists) wrote:

Looking at the Wikipedia article, it claims that  Atlantis-2 “can already be upgraded with current technology to 160Gbit/s”. Would be interesting why that wasn’t already done on this 20-year-old cable – assuming that the underground infrastructure (repeaters) are compatible with the newer modulations (or additional wavelengths, but that would have necessitated much more design), the upgrade cost should be small compared to the cable’s value.


There is only so far you can upgrade 20-year old repeaters until considering to replace all of them across the full length of the current system makes building a new system a simpler option.

Repeaters aren't cheap, and you'd need more over a shorter interval distance to increase capacity, or deploy current generation ones to minimize cost without sacrificing ultimate capacity.

Mark.