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Our History
Submarine telecommunications has come a long way, and it all started in 1858, before the telephone was invented, with the first transatlantic telegraph cable.
Inter-continental submarine cables used for voice traffic had to wait another 98 years until 1956, when the first transatlantic coaxial cable came into service.
NEC has been a manufacturer of submarine telecommunications systems from the very early stages. Our OCC cable plant began life as early as 1935, and in 1968 we started production of coaxial repeaters for submarine applications. Since then, we have continued to supply the latest state of the art submarine systems to our customers worldwide.
In 1985, coaxial systems became obsolete with the introduction of optical transmission. NEC was quick to convert its production from coaxial to optical, and led the industry into the world of optical submarine telecommunications. However, the regenerators used at that time still relied on a process of optical-electrical-optical conversion, and could only regenerate a single wavelength per optical fiber. The next major breakthrough had to wait until 1994, when optical fiber amplifiers were introduced. These greatly improved the data capacity of submarine networks through multi-channel dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems.
Driven by the Internet revolution, and with the achievable number of DWDM channels increasing year-on-year, NEC continued to expand its footprint from the mid-90's onward. In deploying large systems like Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 (in service 2001, upgraded with our own 40Gbps technology in 2011), NEC developed its reputation not only as an equipment manufacturer, but also as a trusted turnkey system integrator. We have also supplied projects in all corners of the globe, such as I-ME-WE and Unity – nowhere is beyond NEC's reach.
In more recent times, competitive tendering for upgrades to existing cable has become more prevalent. NEC has accumulated great experience of deploying new terminal equipment on cables originally supplied by others, and in successfully operating these upgraded systems independently of the initial vendors.
Now NEC is preparing to launch submarine terminal equipment operating at true 100G line rates – delivering ever-lower cost per Gbps. But the story of submarine communications will not stop there. NEC's labs are among the most renowned in the world for optical transmission, producing a steady stream of best-in-class publications and field-proven experimental results in critical technologies such as coding and modulation, coherent detection, and non-linear compensation. These technologies feed into the NEC product portfolio to underpin the next generation of world-beating submarine systems – and the generation beyond that.
So, whatever the precise nature and direction of future submarine systems, we can be sure that their performance, reliability and upgradability would be unimaginable to those who pioneered the industry over 150 years ago.
