Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe
Logo from 2003
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| Industry | Telecommunication |
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| Founded | 1999 |
| Owner | Global Cloud Xchange |
Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) is a 28,000-kilometer-long optical fiber mostly-submarine communications cable that connects the United Kingdom, Japan, and many places in between. The cable is operated by Global Cloud Xchange. The system runs from the eastern coast of North America to Japan. Its Europe-Asia segment was the fourth longest cable in the world in 2008.
The Europe-Asia segment was laid by Cable & Wireless Marine in the mid-1990s and was the subject of an article in Wired magazine in December 1996 by Neal Stephenson.
The FLAG cable system was first placed into commercial service in late 1997. FLAG offered a speed of 10 Gbit/s and uses synchronous digital hierarchy technology. It carries over 120,000 voice channels via 27,000 km of mostly undersea cable. FLAG uses erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and was jointly supplied by AT&T Submarine Systems and KDD-Submarine Cable Systems. Its design, development, installation and service conformed to ISO 9000 quality standards. FLAG provided a link between the European end of high-density transatlantic crossings and the Asian end of the transpacific crossings.
FLAG includes undersea cable segments and two terrestrial crossings. The segments can be either direct point-to-point links or multipoint links which are attained through branching units. At each cable landing point, a FLAG cable station is located. The total route length exceeds 27,000 km and comprises 1,020 km of terrestrial crossings. Approximately 6,600 km of the submerged cable is buried 1 m below the sea bed. Cable burial was performed by either a submersible plough as the cable was laid or jetting the laid cable into the sea bed via remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).
Over several years the route evolved as new branches and feeder systems were considered and realized. FLAG includes two terrestrial crossings, one in Egypt and the other in Thailand. Each of these land crossings is totally duplicated on fully different routes. As a result, any fault within one route will cause automatic protection switching to the other route within a time period of less than 50 ms.
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Wikipedia