Equinix, the world’s digital infrastructure company, and Crosslake Fibre, a leading provider of network services, have announced that CrossChannel Fibre, a new international fibre-optic cable project, will connect to Equinix data centres in London and Paris. The new system will be delivered by Crosslake Fibre to Equinix’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres — LD4 in London and PA7 in Paris, via landings in Brighton and Veules-les-Roses. CrossChannel Fibre will be the first subsea fibre-optic project laid across the English Channel in nearly 20 years and is due to be ready for service in Q4 2021.
Built by Crosslake Fibre and terminating in Equinix data centres, the 520 km build with 96 fibre pairs will be capable of delivering over 20 terabits per fibre pair, with the new network due to be the lowest latency fibre network between London and Paris. The project marks the second collaboration between Crosslake Fibre and Equinix, the first being connectivity between Toronto and Secaucus, New Jersey.
Crosslake Fibre selected Equinix data centres LD4 and PA7 as landing hubs due to the comprehensive digital ecosystems housed there, including a variety of key business partners such as network service providers (NSPs), cloud service providers (CSPs) and leading companies across the financial services, media and entertainment, gaming and e-commerce industries.
Data traffic is proliferating around the world and 99% of global transoceanic traffic is being delivered via subsea cables. As global enterprises look to capitalise on business opportunities in Europe, they are finding they also require more capacity to run distributed IT operations at the digital edge, including cloud-based applications. By connecting to Equinix data centres, Crosslake Fibre and its users can leverage Equinix’s mature business ecosystems and interconnection platform — Platform Equinix — which connects close to 10,000 businesses in over 60 markets around the globe.
Highlights/Key facts
- Using new methods of construction to develop next-generation networks, Crosslake Fibre has built new Internet infrastructure that provides material advantages to customers. The direct access from CrossChannel to the business ecosystems inside Equinix is a significant advantage for Crosslake Fibre’s customers, as it provides a new geographically diverse, low latency route to critical partners in the major economic centres of the UK and France. This also attracts businesses looking for wholesale dark fibre and bandwidth capacity in and out of these markets, including content, cloud and network service providers, financial services firms, government agencies and hyperscalers who want to put their workload cache nodes proximate to cable heads for greater performance. Indeed, with this new submarine cable network, financial market participants will be able to link their cloud providers, market data and risk analytics platforms in a seamless and secure setup.
- Platform Equinix consists of around 10,000 companies, including more than 1,800 networks and 2,900 cloud and IT service providers, providing a strong global interconnected ecosystem for submarine cables to connect to. Today, 40 of Equinix’s 220+ IBXs are subsea-enabled, covering over 60 metros around the world and providing industry-leading reliability, security, performance and choice of rich digital ecosystems.
- Equinix’s recently expanded Equinix Fabric capabilities are changing the way digital businesses connect to critical infrastructure. The number of digital ecosystem customers that can now be accessed via Equinix Fabric has significantly increased and includes subsea cable operators. Participants have the ability to connect to any other customer on Platform Equinix. This increases the interconnection reach to service providers, partners and customers by more than 3x — from 2,300 to over 10,000.
- The unrepeated and double-armored CrossChannel Fibre cable will include dark fibre and have a target burial depth of two metres beneath the seabed for maximum security and performance. The CrossChannel system will also be connected to many neighbouring cable systems to extend its capacity beyond the UK and France, and to other locations in Europe and further afield.
- As enterprises are increasingly looking to expand their services on a global scale, operating within an interconnected ecosystem of players is more important now than ever before. The Equinix 2020-21 Global Tech Trends Survey of 2,600 IT decision-makers revealed that, globally, IT leaders are prioritising connecting with new digital ecosystems – 59% of respondents cite this as a priority of their organisation’s technology strategy.
