EXA Infrastructure has signed a Contract in Force with Xtera for EXA Meridian, a new 6,552km subsea cable running from New Jersey to Brean, UK. It will be EXA's ninth transatlantic cable and, the company says, the first built by a single operator in a decade.
The cable is designed with 24 fibre pairs delivering more than 500 Tbps of capacity, with a ready-for-service date set for Q4 2029. Anchor commitments from neocloud and hyperscale operators are already in place alongside tier-one supplier agreements, though no customers are named in the announcement.
The commercial rationale sits with a structural shift in how the largest bandwidth buyers procure capacity. Hyperscalers and financial institutions are increasingly moving from individual wavelengths to full spectrum and complete fibre pairs, locking in supply years before they need it. EXA is building EXA Meridian in response to that shift rather than for spot-market demand.
Unlike most transatlantic systems, EXA Meridian will connect directly into EXA's owned European backbone, with a new cable landing station at Brean feeding diverse terrestrial routes through to Slough. That integration removes the need for customers to manage separate agreements for the subsea and terrestrial legs, with EXA acting as a single counterparty across both.
Xtera, the subsea telecommunications specialist, will act as a key supplier. EXA's project team has previously delivered transatlantic systems in its portfolio, which spans nine cables once EXA Meridian is complete.
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