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Photonics and the Future of Computing

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Photonic computing is like hollow core fibre. The advantages are so great in each case that their long term adoption appears almost inevitable. Logic gates in traditional silicon-based computing rely on using electric charges to represent binary information. The drawbacks are quite clear. The electricity becomes heat. In the presence of high transistor density this translates to calculation errors as well as hardware failure. In turn, high heat requires cooling systems and more electricity. Indeed, electricity is the largest operating expense for a data centre. In 2025 Equinix facilities consumed 8.6 Terawatt hours. A good guess is that at least 60% of the firm's cost of revenues is power. In 2025 the Equinix cost of revenue totalled $4.5 billion so power costs were at least $2.7 billion.  In contrast, photonic computers uses infrared lasers on chips. This consumes a fraction of the power that silicon wafers need. Residual heat is minuscule so the cooling demand drops substantially...
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Google Announces Three New Indian Subsea Fibre Optic Cables

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Google announced today a $15 billion dollar infrastructure investment in India that includes a new cable landing station in Visakhapatnam (Vizag), a Mumbai to Perth subsea link, a cable connecting Vizag to Singapore via a Malaysian landing (like Bay of Bengal Gateway), a subsea network between Chennai and Vizag, and a major cable from Vizag to Capetown. Although hyperscalers are frequent targets of criticism, one cannot say they lack ambition. 😀 Google's connectivity investments aim to create seamless, high capacity cables connecting India to the US using new and physically diverse routes. 1. First cable from India's West Coast to Australia. 2. First Indian  cable to South Africa. 3. Creation of a third Indian subsea hub in Vizag to improve cable landing diversity. 4. A cable link between India's two East Coast subsea and telecom hubs. 5. India's second cable to reach Singapore via Malaysian overland routes. Remarks: 1. I think Sify is like to be the cable landing oper...
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African Subsea Cable Pricing: Time To Stop Whining And Start Buying

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 African subsea cable leased capacity prices have bottomed around $18K to $22K MRC per 100G per month for Equiano and 2Africa. Examples include Lisbon to Lagos and Ghana to Lagos. Prices are not going lower. First of all, Google kept some Equiano capacity for itself and Facebook kept 4 of 2Africa's 16 pairs for itself. Moreover, 2Africa lands in over 25 countries. So average capacity per country excluding Facebook is approximately 6 Tbps. That figure would fall further if the Red Sea segment is ever completed. Finally, all consortium members for both cables are keeping some capacity for their own Internet backbones. Corroborating evidence that prices will remain stable is that consortium carriers are reluctant to sell wavelength or spectrum IRUs. Carriers sell IRUs for two reasons. The first is network asset portfolio rebalancing. If a carrier has plentiful capacity on cable X with relatively low pricing, it might sell an IRU to obtain capacity on cable Y that it can ...
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$17.5K 100G Peace Cable Waves: No Chinese Carrier Nor Chinese Equipment

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The provider owns a Peace cable fibre pair and is not subject to Chinese security regulations or jurisdiction. All submarine line termination equipment is Nokia. A point: Marseille Digital Realty. Z point: SG1 or Global Switch, Singapore. Term: 3 years. Service: Layer 1. Bandwidth: 100G Wave. MRC: $18.5K Customer responsible for cross connects.
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Indigo West Cable Restored To Full Service

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I got an instant message from an Australian ISP late yesterday my time saying my information was out-of-date and that the cable was almost completely repaired. Indigo West is now passing traffic. "We are pleased to confirm that all three faults affecting the Indigo West cable system have now been fully repaired and resolved, with services restored and stable. A summary of the faults, including their locations and resolution status, is provided below: • Fault #1 – A Fibre break in Indonesian Waters that was successfully repaired on 19/01/2026. • Fault #2 – A Partial fibre break off the coast of Perth in shallow waters that was confirmed successfully repaired on 10/02/2026 at 10:57 UTC. • Fault #3 – A shunt fault in Indonesian Waters approximately 380-410km away from Fault #1 location, inland towards Singapore was successfully repaired on 03/02/2026. All traffic has been restored and services are now operating normally. We will continue to monitor the Indigo West closel...
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FCC Approves Deployment of Logos Space's 4,178 LEO Satellite Deployment

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Logos Space is a new LEO satellite provider that plans to put over four thousand LEO birds into seven orbital shells in the 870 to 920 kilometer span above the Earth. Logos is taking an unusual approach. Its target market includes businesses and governments, but excludes households. Instead of Internet, Logos offers highly secure Layer 2 MPLS Ethernet services. These are the core products, not transit. To improve security over traditional satellite services, it is operating in the high frequency V and E spectrum bands along with the lower frequency K band. This enables the use of narrow beams to connect the customer premise equipment to a satellite. These narrow beams are much more difficult to intercept for eavesdropping or jamming.  Most LEO constellations provide exclusively Layer 3 services. Satellite frequency spectrum is a finite, strictly limited resource. So overbooked or oversubscribed transit has been the only service that traditionally made economic sense. N...
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The Barracuda Fibre Optic Subsea Cable Project

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Teset Capital is financing a $100 million, 12 fibre pair cable directly linking Valencia, Spain to Genoa, Italy. The network includes POPs in Madrid, Valencia, Genoa, and Milano. It is a remarkably high capacity system designed for 32 Tbps per fibre pair. This implies a 384 Tbps aggregate transmission rate. The cable will land at Sparkle's Genoa CLS and also at a carrier neutral CLS in Valencia. This cable is part of a bigger project. Teset along with two other investment groups owns both the Barracuda cable and the affiliated Valencia Digital Port Connect Project. The project includes the Valencia cable landing station where Barracud will land as well as a nearby data center.  A social media post suggests that Sparkle has acquired fibre pair capacity on the wet segment. It also suggests Sparkle is providing or selling backhaul services. Details are important. If Sparkle is providing lit Layer 1 services to Madrid and Milano, then the project is unlikely to suceed. End-to-end cost ...
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