Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, the cables subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent, and Telefónica are upgrading the PENCAN-7 and PENCAN-8 undersea cable systems linking landing points on the Spanish mainland to Gran Canaria and Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

The 100 Gbit/s upgrade will offer a more than tenfold increase of the current system capacity, allowing to meet growing demand for broadband services and connectivity.

The PENCAN-7 and PENCAN-8 systems, which are both 1,400km in length, respectively connect Chipiona in Cadiz Province (Spain Mainland) to Las Palmas/Altavista in Gran Canaria, and Conil also in Cadiz Province to Candelaria in Tenerife.

These two submarine cables are part of the Telefonica PENCAN Network which links the Peninsula (Spain Mainland) with Canary Island. The PENCAN Network, comprises of four geographically diversified, fiber optics submarine cables PENCAN-6, PENCAN-7, PENCAN-8 and PENCAN-9.

Maria Jesus Almazor, Regional Director for Southern Spain at Telefónica, said: “PENCAN Submarine Cable Systems have a proven track record of operational excellence based on optimum network performance and further scalability via seamless upgrades. The additional capacity available with ASN’s advanced technology will contribute significantly in meeting the ongoing demand in the markets served by these Systems.”

Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, said: “We are pleased to support Telefónica their expansion of connectivity between Spain mainland and the Canary Islands, enabling the expansion of capacity to boost broadband traffic. ASN’s unique submarine technology provides operators like Telefónica an easy upgrade path and scalability to multi-terabit capacity, with staged migration combining technological and economic benefits. This allows quicker service turn-up to meet the end-user’s expectations for anywhere, anytime ultra-broadband access to applications, storage and computing.”