Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

The emerging computer scientist consensus is that large language models are a dead end and will never achieve general artificial intelligence. It is interesting in this respect that Microsoft just cancelled two gigawatts worth of data center projects. Analysts at TD Cowen, an investment management firm, argue that a data center glut is developing due to too many AI-driven projects. Their view is supported by senior management in the cloud and data center industries. "Earlier this week, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Chairman Joe Tsai warned of a potential bubble in data center construction, saying new projects may exceed demand for AI services." Right now the main demand is for AI writing and data summary services via chatbots. It takes a special kind of obtuseness to think these services merit hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars in data centers, GPUs, and servers.  The herd phenomenon where copy cats pile into a sector due to investor excitement, but without a soli...

The chart shows that foreign tariffs on US goods and services are not much higher than US tariffs on their foreign counterparts. European tariffs on US goods and services are less than 2% higher than their American counterparts. There were no tariffs between the US, Canada, and Mexico prior to Trump's trade war. My forecast is the planned Republican tax cuts guarantee that the US continues to run high trade deficits. In fact, they will grow as higher government deficits raise US interest rates and strengthen the dollar. A higher dollar reduces the price of imported goods and services and raises the price of American exports.  In light of the small tariff differentials no trade agreement is likely to compress the US trade deficit. Now there are always non-tariff barriers that a free trade agreement could dismantle, but some will undoutedly remain because many counties have higher quality and safety  standards than the US. For example, European meat has lower bacter...

1 Year Term; Customer handles cross connects.

The East Asia to America cable connects Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and the US. It is a standard spatial multiplexing cable with 12 fibre pairs and aggregate design throughput of 192 Tbps. Per fibre pair throughput is relatively limited 16 Tbps due to the cable's long length of 12,500 kilometers together with the lack of any intermediate power sources. E2A is an open cable so the common infrastructure is limited to the wet segment plus the power feed which is typically housed at the cable landing station. Each fibre pair and spectrum owner will install and operate their own submarine termination equipment such as the DWDM kit. Indeed, each owner is free to choose the data centers in which it terminates its capacity. The network design minimizes latency by using a main trunk from Taiwan to Moro, California with branching units to South Korea and Japan. See the map below.  This cable is interesting because to date there have been no direct South Korea to US links. This is the first. ...

 NTT is the lead consortium member on a new Indian subsea cable linking Mumbai and Chennai to Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Like most cables these days Mist is a spatial division multiplexing system. It has 12 fibre pairs with aggregate transmission capacity of 240 Tbps. The DWDM backbone is 400G. Mist is part of a new wave of high capacity, high fibre count subsea cables connecting India to Europe and Southeast Asia that also includes Blue-Raman, IEX, and IAX. Information on their transmission rates is sparse, but their collective throughput is probably at least a half petabit per second and perhaps as high as 750 Tbps. NTT spent about $400 million on the project, which is part of a bigger plan to become a major data center player in India. Indian carriers still largely dominate the local data center business although that is rapidly changing as Equinix makes a concerted push. Undoubtedly, NTT management realized that the main obstacle to thriving Indian data centers...

Looking for new long haul providers from Portugal to Madrid and beyond? I've got them. Lisbon/Madrid/Barcelona/Marseille and Madrid/Paris. These unique routes are in the gas pipeline rights of way and often include new fibre. No Colt nor EXA in the conduit systems.   Just say no to the usual suspects. A 100G wave from LS1 to other Portuguese data centers as well as Madrid is 975 Euros on a 3 year term. You will not be in the same conduit system as Colt or EXA. In fact, most of your Layer 3 upstreams are also absent so this ideal for improving network resiliency via unique physical diversity.