On 13/Jul/20 15:41, Colin Stanners (lists) wrote: > > Looking at the Wikipedia article, it claims that Atlantis-2 “can > already be upgraded with current technology to 160Gbit/s”. Would be > interesting why that wasn’t already done on this 20-year-old cable – > assuming that the underground infrastructure (repeaters) are > compatible with the newer modulations (or additional wavelengths, but > that would have necessitated much more design), the upgrade cost > should be small compared to the cable’s value. >
There is only so far you can upgrade 20-year old repeaters until considering to replace all of them across the full length of the current system makes building a new system a simpler option. Repeaters aren't cheap, and you'd need more over a shorter interval distance to increase capacity, or deploy current generation ones to minimize cost without sacrificing ultimate capacity. Mark.
