ViaWest Inks Access Deal for Microsoft's New Transpacific Cable

ViaWest announced that one of its two Hillsboro, Oregon, data centers will provide direct access to the New Cross Pacific submarine cable between the US and Asia, set to be operational later this year.

Construction on the partially Microsoft-backed, 13,000-km cable project began in 2015. Once completed, it will be accessible at ViaWest’s Brookwood data center.

Access to NCP will also be available in other facilities on the Hillsboro Data Center Fiber Ring, a metro fiber network that includes facilities operated by EdgeConneX, Infomart, and Digital Realty Trust, as well as ViaWest's second Hillsboro data center.

Through this ring, the data centers link to the Tata Communications-owned TGN Hillsboro Landing Station, which serves as the US end of the currently active TGN Transpacific Cable System. The ring also serves as a cross-connect facility for several other transpacific submarine cables already in operation, including Google-backed FASTER and TPE.

Read more: ViaWest Fiber Access Agreement Strengthens the ‘Hillsboro Ring’

The NCP cable system will land at a landing station in Pacific City, about 40 miles south of the TGN station in Nedonna Beach. ViaWest's NCP deal will add access to yet another transpacific cable to Hillsboro's metro fiber ring.

Also under construction is the Hawaiki Submarine Cable, a transpacific cable system backed in part by Amazon Web Services that will also land in Pacific City.

See also: Here are the Submarine Cables Funded by Cloud Giants

The NCP network will link Hillsboro to Chongming, Nanhui, and Lingang in China; Busan in South Korea; Toucheng in Taiwan; and Maruyama in Japan. The transmission of multiple wavelength channel signals through a 100G amplified cable system will provide up to 80 tbps of capacity.

Microsoft has a 50 percent stake in the NCP, other investors being China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom and KT Corp.

ViaWest is owned by the Canadian telco Shaw Communications. A report surfaced earlier this year saying the telco may be looking to sell the data center business.

Shaw announced last year that it will offer access to Microsoft's Azure cloud services out of all its data centers, including those operated by ViaWest.