Spotlight: Lumen’s new transatlantic fibre route

To help meet the growing need for more data flow and online content between the US and Europe, Lumen has boosted its transatlantic capacity with a new subsea fibre route hosted on Google’s Dunant cable which connects Richmond, Virginia and Paris, France. 

The Dunant cable, according to Lumen, is the highest capacity fibre optic route between North America and Europe, and the company’s new on-net route route will be critical to helping its customers handle the “spike in the demand for cloud connectivity services and data worldwide” caused by ongoing digital transformations and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

No other subsea cable route comes close to the capacity levels traversing the trans-Atlantic," said TeleGeography research director Alan Mauldin. "Looking forward, there's no question that tremendous new capacity will be required on this route. Lumen's decision to increase their capacity across the Atlantic makes a world of sense." 

Demand for international bandwidth already more than doubles every two years - a trend which is expected to accelerate still further over the coming decade. 

Lumen’s new route on the Dunant system will offer optional diversity, latency, and custom routing guarantees, according to the company. 

"We're in an era of 'more'. The need for more online content, more applications and more cloud services between continents won't diminish anytime soon," said Laurinda Pang, Lumen president, global customer success. 

She added: "That's why this subsea infrastructure is so important. The capacity Lumen will be offering on the Dunant subsea cable can be scaled to meet increased customer broadband demands for years to come. With our comprehensive transatlantic subsea portfolio, customers will enjoy diverse routes, low latency and a connection to one of the most interconnected and deeply peered networks in the world."

Lumen also just recently announced the expansion of its fiber network in Europe, strengthening its service capabilities in France, Switzerland and Spain. It plans to begin delivering services on the Dunant subsea system in September.