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In 2015, Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN) introduced its 1620 SOFTNODE submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE), designed to give operators more flexibility in upgrading undersea cable capacity. The company said the platform could support up to 240 Tbit/s across multiple fiber pairs, while a separate ACE cable field trial reached 12.6 Tbit/s per fiber pair. Those figures describe different things: one was a stated platform capability, the other a reported trial result.
What the 1620 SOFTNODE was designed to do
SOFTNODE was an evolution of ASN’s 1620 SLTE architecture and 1620LM terminal. SLTE is the shore-side equipment that sends and receives traffic over a submarine cable. The submerged cable and its associated equipment are often called the wet plant; terminal equipment at the landing station is part of the dry plant.
The 2015 announcement presented SOFTNODE as a platform for both incremental upgrades and new cable systems. Its central idea was to adapt transmission rates and wavelength allocation to the route and the cable’s available capacity, rather than rely on a single fixed configuration. ASN said the platform could help connect data centers and points of presence and tune capacity to route requirements. Alcatel-Lucent’s May 11, 2015 announcement described the following capabilities; they are historical vendor specifications, not current product guarantees.
- Variable line-card rates: a single line card could be configured for 100, 200, 300, or 400 Gbit/s transmission. ASN gave 400G for regional use and 300G for transoceanic transit as examples.
- Flexible modulation: the platform offered 48 software-configurable submarine modulation formats, allowing the transmission scheme to be selected for system needs.
- Fine-grained spectrum allocation: gridless wavelength tuning down to 33 GHz was intended to let operators use spectrum more flexibly.
- Long-haul reach: ASN stated a reach of up to 14,000 km. The announcement does not establish that every configuration could achieve that distance at every rate.
- Network functions: the release listed support for OTN and GMPLS connections.
ASN also said the smaller terminal equipment could reduce landing-station footprint by up to ten times and power consumption by a factor of two to three compared with the previous SLTE generation. These were vendor-reported comparisons; the release does not provide independent test results or the conditions behind each reduction.
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What the 2015 capacity figures mean
The most prominent capacity numbers in the launch material are not interchangeable. One is a platform-level claim covering multiple fiber pairs; the other is a reported field-trial result on a named cable.
| Figure | What it describes | Attribution and date |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 240 Tbit/s across multiple fiber pairs | SOFTNODE platform capability as announced; it is not a per-fiber-pair figure. | Alcatel-Lucent, May 11, 2015. Company announcement. |
| 12.6 Tbit/s per fiber pair | Reported field-trial result on the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) cable. | Alcatel-Lucent, May 11, 2015. Company announcement. |
| 610 km at 100 Gbps | Reported unrepeatered subsea transmission achievement; the same fiber carried the signal and amplifier transmission. It was separate from the SOFTNODE capacity figures and the ACE trial. | Alcatel-Lucent, as reported by Data Center Knowledge on May 18, 2015. Data Center Knowledge report. |
ACE had been in service since December 2012, according to the 2015 company release. That release also said GoTo Networks had selected SOFTNODE for the Australia West Express system. These statements document what ASN reported at the time; they do not establish later deployment status.
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Why variable rates and spectrum flexibility mattered
Submarine cable capacity is shaped by the route, the submerged transmission system, and the shore-side equipment. A configurable rate can let an operator choose a transmission mode that suits a particular link, while finer wavelength spacing can help use available spectrum more efficiently. In ASN’s framing, that combination made it possible to add capacity in stages or configure a new system around its intended routes instead of treating all links as identical.
This flexibility has to be understood as a system-design choice, not a promise that every cable can carry the platform’s maximum advertised capacity. The 2015 release gives examples of rates and a maximum reach but does not specify one configuration that combines the maximum rate, reach, and aggregate capacity. Likewise, the footprint and power figures compare generations in the vendor’s account; they should not be treated as independently verified savings for every landing station.
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Later developments are a different generation
ASN’s March 15, 2023 announcement described a later generation of its PSI-SUB SOFTNODE SLTE platform using Nokia sixth-generation PSE-6s coherent optics. It stated that PSE-6s operates at 130 Gbaud and supports up to 1.2 Tb/s per wavelength, as well as 400GE and 800GE services. ASN said SLTE power consumption could be reduced by up to 35% and expected equipment trials in the second half of 2023. Those were 2023 claims and expectations, not specifications of the 2015 1620 SOFTNODE. Read ASN’s 2023 announcement.
The 2015 figure of 240 Tbit/s across multiple fiber pairs cannot be compared directly with the later figure of up to 1.2 Tb/s per wavelength: one is an aggregate platform capacity claim and the other is a per-wavelength transponder capability. They also refer to different product generations and dates. ASN’s current upgrade page describes later upgrade technology, but its undated specifications can change and should not be read back into the original launch.
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ASN’s wider design approach: more fiber pairs
ASN’s later work also includes space-division multiplexing (SDM), a design approach that increases the number of fiber pairs in a cable system. On its SDM technology page, ASN says it introduced SDM1 in 2016, presented a 16-fiber-pair cable concept at SubOptic in 2016, and fully qualified SDM1 in 2019. The company describes trading a traditional high-power, high-OSNR, high-effective-area fiber approach for lower-power, lower-OSNR, lower-effective-area fiber and more fiber pairs. It says this can minimize nonlinear effects and use repeater pump farming and higher fiber counts to pursue lower cost per bit. These are ASN’s descriptions of its own approach, not proof of a universal industry consensus. ASN’s SDM overview.
Keep adjacent applications separate
ASN’s March 2023 climate-change announcement concerned a separate solution in development: adding scientific sensors to submarine telecommunications systems for climate observation, seismic and tsunami detection, and asset-integrity monitoring. It is an example of another potential use of submarine infrastructure, not a feature of the 2015 SOFTNODE launch. ASN’s climate-change solution announcement.
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How to read the performance claims
The clearest way to interpret the numbers is to keep their dates, owners, and measurement types attached. The 2015 platform and ACE figures came from Alcatel-Lucent’s announcement; the 610 km unrepeatered claim was reported by Data Center Knowledge from the company; and the later optical figures came from ASN’s 2023 release. The cited announcements establish what the companies reported, but do not independently validate performance, current availability, or present-day specifications of the 2015 product.
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