As AI-driven demand accelerates, Ciena and Meta have set a new world record — achieving unregenerated single carrier 800 Gb/s across a transpacific submarine cable spanning 16,608 kilometers from Singapore to California. Powered by Ciena’s WaveLogic 6 Extreme coherent optics, this milestone redefines capacity, efficiency, and sustainable global connectivity at a global scale.
A new world record is achieved
Demand for the internet and digital capacity is at its highest point, buoyed by AI, new cloud services, and other emerging technologies. These technologies are managed through a global network anchored by almost 600 submarine cables.
Ciena and Meta recently pushed the boundaries of subsea performance with a series of trials on a Meta fiber pair of the Bifrost cable system which transports high-capacity data traffic between Singapore, Indonesia, The Philippines, Guam, and the U.S. West Coast using Ciena’s latest coherent optical innovation — WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) — delivering multiple record-setting results.
800 Gb/s was successfully transmitted across an unregenerated, point-to-point undersea optical link spanning 16,608 km, establishing a world-record distance for a single-carrier 800G wavelength. This achievement reinforces the “800G everywhere” value of WL6e, demonstrating that ultra-high-capacity wavelengths can perform reliably across the longest and most demanding subsea routes.
Equally impressive, the trial delivered 18 Tb/s of total fiber pair capacity with excess operating margin to spare, housed in a highly compact Submarine Line Terminal Equipment (SLTE) footprint of just 10 rack units (RU), providing a 50% reduction in watts/bit, when compared to our last generation of coherent modems. The results are not only exceptional from a scale perspective, but also remarkable in terms of space and power efficiency — a critical advantage in subsea landing stations where every rack unit and watt matters.
Figure 1: Transpacific Bifrost submarine cable system
These performance milestones are more than technical achievements — they reflect the evolving network requirements of AI and cloud-scale innovation. This means managing an internal network with high capacity and ultra-low latency across continents to better train and deploy AI models and associated services. This technology firmly positions organizations like Meta to manage an AI-ready infrastructure over long distances while building a power and space-efficient platform that supports unprecedented demands while also delivering numerous Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) benefits. For example, lowering power consumption and reducing space requirements translate into a smaller carbon footprint that supports Meta’s net-zero goals. By leveraging Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution powered by our 6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS) and Waveserver platform using WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) coherent optics, Meta ensures its submarine network infrastructure is optimized for long-term sustainability, scalability, and reliability.
Leveraging Ciena’s technology advantage
At the core of this achievement is our WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) coherent optics. When compared to Ciena’s previous generation of coherent optical technology, WL6e provides the following benefits:
- Up to 1.6 Tb/s per wavelength
- 800Gb/s connectivity across virtually all network links, overland and undersea
- Fully programmable baud and line rate, enabling link capacity optimization
- At least double the wavelength capacity
- 50% reduction in space and power per bit
- 15% improvement in spectral efficiency
This combination of efficiency, scalability, and reliability makes Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution ideal for hyperscalers like Meta, who demand performance, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness.
Looking ahead
As we work with Meta to push the submarine cable system to its limits, we anticipate setting new benchmarks for capacity and efficiency. This is more than a new world record—it’s a glimpse into the future of global connectivity, where submarine cables are the backbone of the next industrial revolution, Artificial Intelligence.