Emerald Networks has announced a 5,200km cable from US to Ireland, with a spur linking to Iceland will commence operations in 2013.

The whole network infrastructure provider, which has cornerstone investment from the Wellcome Trust said it has appointed  investment back Jefferies & Company, Inc to complete a US£300m fundraise in order to finance the project.The cable will hae a transmission rate of 100 Gbps per channel with an expected latnecy of less than 62 milliseconds round trip from New York to London.

The last of the transatlantic cables were installed back in 2003, as a result, transatlantic demand is expected to outstrip capacity by 2015, the company said. The route for the cable will link Shirley, New York (London Island) and Belmullet on the West Coast of Ireland, with a branching unit to Grinkavik, Iceland. Emerald Networks' fiber optic cable is designed at 100 waves x 100 Gbps per Fiber Pair (60Tbit total transatlantic design capacity) The speed of computing doubles every 18 months and transatlantic capacity demand is expected to increase almost nine fold by 2017.

As the current subsea cables are nearing the end of their useful life and the operational cost to maintain them becomes impractical leaving the need for newer, faster, low latency systems like Emerald Networks, which will also have the advantage of utilizing with the latest coherent technology.

Ray Sembler, CEO of Emerald Networks, commented: “This is an extremely exciting time and we believe we are well placed to execute our strategy. We expect to be ready for service by Spring 2013 with the largest, low latency submarine fibre optic cable the industry has seen. TE SubCom, the undersea cable system supplier has commenced operations and we look forward to their successful completion of the project. Their experience in building quality subsea cable systems is readily known and the fact that they are a US-based turnkey supplier makes them an ideal provider for the Emerald Express system. AP Telecom, our agent reseller, has already successfully commenced pre-sales activity with agreements to be signed imminently."