The two are to provide each other with backhaul from the Dunant submarine cable, a Google project.
The Dunant cable is adding more capacity to one of the world’s busiest network routes across the Atlantic to address the massive growth in data traffic between Europe and the US.
International customers
This 6,600km-long transatlantic cable will connect the US to the French Atlantic coast, with services expected to begin in late 2020.
Under this agreement, Orange and Telxius will co-locate services at their respective cable landing stations – at Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez in France and Virginia Beach in the US – and operate them. Both are strategic, located near main connectivity hubs.
From its Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez (85) Cable Landing Station, Orange will enable terrestrial connection to Telxius up to Paris, while Telxius will connect Orange to Ashburn from Virginia Beach.
This collaboration means both companies can provide multi-terabit capacity on this Europe-US route. It also reinforces Orange and Telxius’ intentions to support new digital usages for their international customers in Europe and America.
Wholesale market
It also enables them to strengthen their positions in the wholesale market to meet the needs of content providers and third-party operators.
Orange is a major investor in more than 40 submarine cables has teamed up with Telxius, the infrastructure company in which Telefónica Group is the biggest shareholder.
“We are pleased to announce this agreement with Telxius, which will allow us to provide our customers with very high capacity end-to-end services, as well as network redundancy, on the strategic transatlantic route.
We will be operating two fibre pairs of over 30 terabits per second between France and the US. It is a valuable extension to Orange’s global network joining our Atlantic and Mediterranean routes to Africa, the Middle East and Asia with guaranteed best in class quality of service,” said Jerome Barré, CEO of Orange Wholesale and International Networks.
“This agreement confirms our commitment to provide the best services to our partners and customers, offering the latest technology, diverse routes and best latency. We are pleased to join forces with Orange on this new route which in combination with our existing MAREA system puts Telxius in an excellent position in the strategic Europe–US route,” said Mario Martín, Telxius CEO.