A transatlantic cable is built to be short rather than large
Hibernia Express entered service between New York and London, the first new transatlantic cable in over a decade and the first designed primarily for low latency: routed as directly as the ocean allowed rather than by the conventional corridor, and marketed on a tested round-trip figure of better than 58.95 milliseconds between data centres in the two cities. The customers for the difference were financial trading firms. It is the cleanest available demonstration that the geography of a cable, not its capacity, is what sets the physical floor on how fast information can travel.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Latency as a physical quantity · physical quantity · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Hibernia Express transatlantic latency figures
Supports the September 2015 entry into service of the first transatlantic cable optimised for low latency and the tested 58.95 ms round-trip figure between named data centres in New York and London. V55 verification basis: retrieved in summary, not opened. This is a commercial performance claim by the operator and its data-centre partner, measured between specific facilities, and is not an independent measurement of a route.
Hibernia Networks and Equinix · 2015 · Partly verified
Hibernia Networks and Equinix announcements of the Hibernia Express cable, September 2015, giving a tested New York–London round-trip latency of better than 58.95 ms
Recorded on Latency as a physical quantity
- A transatlantic cable is built to be short rather than large
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