the telecommunications field, Bermuda-based Pangea Ltd. has announced completion of their major fibre optic cable network.

Pangea Ltd. revealed yesterday that the 127-mile UK-Netherlands submarine link for the PANGEA1 cable system serving Northern Europe and Scandinavia was completed ahead of schedule on August 20.

Lawrence Smith, Pangea's Vice President, Submarine Systems, said the overall cable length between landing points at Lowestoft and Amsterdam was 156 miles.

`This segment is designed to be the highest capacity cable across the North Sea,'' Mr. Smith said. "Between our PoP in London and Network Operations Center in Amsterdam it can be upgraded to handle 7.2 terabits per second.'' The fully funded PANGEA1 system is configured as self-healing submarine and terrestrial rings with an initial capacity of 160 Gigabits per second.

Countries on the network include the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia, as well as direct access to the US.

Alcatel's submarine networks division is responsible for the turnkey installation of the submarine cable system. Using the URC1 cable, Alcatel's newly majority owned CTC Marine projects utilised the Finnish Ice Class Vessel Nordica to simultaneously lay and bury the cable.

"The installation was trouble-free and is the first project in my experience to be completed with zero weather downtime,'' said Mr. Smith. "It is a credit to the professionalism of Alcatel and its close partner CTC Marine Projects.'' Two other submarine cable projects are ongoing between Pangea and Alcatel.

A repeated submarine system is currently being installed between UK and Denmark and a submarine system linking Stockholm and Helsinki via Tallinn in Estonia is now ready for installation.

Mike Barclay, Project Manager for the Pangea Project of Alcatel's submarine networks division, said: "We are pleased to partner with Pangea. This project illustrates Alcatel's ability to work closely with customers. Pangea and Alcatel have proven that by working together they can get world-beating networks installed without problems ahead of schedule.''