Crosslake Fibre explores Atlantic hop around Manhattan
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Crosslake Fibre explores Atlantic hop around Manhattan

Canadian company Crosslake Fibre is planning to bypass Manhattan with a subsea cable along the Atlantic coast between New Jersey and Long Island.

The fibre will be only 95km (59 miles) long, but will link NJFX in Wall, New Jersey, with 1025Connect in Westbury, on Long Island, east of New York City.

“The need for a Manhattan bypass route is growing more critical with increased network congestion and weather-related threats in the region,” said Crosslake CEO Mike Cunningham.

Crosslake has experience planning surprising subsea routes in congested urban parts of North America. Earlier this year Cunningham announced a project to connect the Canadian city of Toronto across Lake Ontario with Buffalo, New York, and last week it started a survey of the lake: hence the company name.

The Wall-Westbury link will be different, though, as it will run through the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. “We selected these endpoints as they are increasingly important hubs for transoceanic connectivity and provide a variety of network connectivity options for customers,” said Cunningham. “As additional transoceanic cables carrying much of the world’s internet traffic land in the region, and growth on existing cables continues, new domestic connectivity onward from the cable landing stations is important.”

NJFX already has a cable landing station on the New Jersey coast. Gil Santaliz, CEO of NJFX, said: “The Crosslake Fibre subsea cable further adds to that ecosystem and brings a unique connectivity option for international and US carriers located here.”

Dan Lunde, managing director of 1025Connect, added: “Introducing the new Crosslake Fibre system adds another strategic option on the continental edge and strengthens our position as the easternmost peering point in the metro area providing a truly diverse, subsea Manhattan bypass route for customers.”

The Wall-Westbury cable will be ready for service in June 2019, said Cunningham. “Our Lake Ontario build is progressing at full speed and has really validated our approach to developing smaller systems,” he added.




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