Posts

Chinese Team Achieves 3.2 Petabits Throughput On A Single Optical Strand

Image
A Chinese team achieved this new world record of 3.2 petabits per second on a single fibre strand using the C, L, and S bands combined with 24 optical cores. So they tripled the usable spectrum on each of the 24 optical highways to get aggregate throughput of 3.2 Tbps. Each core achieved 133 Tbps. It is increasingly common for terrestrial networks to use both C and L bands. For example, Arelion has used the C and L bands because their network routes only consists of one or two fiber pairs. I call it a low fibre count, DWDM-on-steroids approach. The C band is defined as 1530 to 1565 nanometer wavelengths whereas the L band ranges from 1565 to 1625. L band attenuation in standard fiber is only slightly higher than the work horse C band. So L is the natural place to start when expanding the spectrum range to gain more bandwidth. In contrast, the S band has significantly higher attenuation than either C and L band, and consequently, has not been implemented in commercial hardware. S band ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Depreciation Monster Haunting AI Data Center Profits

Image
 Nebius is one of the healthier publicly traded AI data centers companies. Nonetheless, its 2Q2026 income statement illustrates the industry's depreciation challenge. Despite Nebius linearly depreciating GPUs and other server hardware over a generous five years, total depreciation equals 48% of revenues. This figure underestimates true depreciation because technological change and physical burn out means the true average life span is closer to three years. Facebook has provided detailed data on equipment failure during its 56 day estimation of the Llama 3.0 frontier model: https://ai.meta.com/research/publications/the-llama-3-herd-of-models/ . For a 100,000 GPU cluster, equipment failure happens every 30 to 40 minutes. This halts estimation and requires starting over from the previous iteration. Almost all publicly AI data centers exaggerate their profitability and net cash flows by pretending the server hardware lasts 60% longer than it is really does. Michael Burry, who success...
Post a Comment
Read more

African ISPs: Your Subsea Cable Starter Kit - Protected 50G MPLS Lisbon/Lagos $12,250 MRC

Image
This offer is for early stage ISPs that find 100G waves too expensive and worry about potential down time on an unprotected point-to-point optical service. This route protected 50G point-to-point Ethernet circuit rides Africa's most reliable cable, Equiano, which has had zero wet segment outages since it went live in February, 2023. The 2Africa cable provides the protect path. End points are OADC Lagos and LS1 Lisbon. Term is 2 years. MPLS restoration. Customer is responsible for cross connects. 
Post a Comment
Read more

10 Year AAE1 100G Wave IRU: $1.2 Million

Image
4% O&M; MRS1/SG1.  Fast Path: 135 ms RTD. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Trans-Continental 100G Market Pricing Report: Marseille/Singapore

Image
Peace Cable Layer 1 100G floor pricing is approximately $17K per month on 1 year contracts for Chinese carriers. There is a $4K MRC premium for non-Chinese carrier capacity using Western network gear like Ciena or Nokia.  SMW5 MRCs range from upper 20Ks to mid-30K range. Mostly sold out; real offers extremely rare. AAE1 MRCs for the standard latency route range from $26K to lower $30Ks. 
Post a Comment
Read more

The Traditional African Cable Landing Station

Image
You pay $40K for a 100G wave to the CLS, but its operator hits you with another $60K for the cross connect. 🙂 Much like the Hotel California in the Eagles' song. 😉
Post a Comment
Read more

Meet Me At The Nigeria Peering & Interconnection Conference

Image
I will be presenting on African subsea cables at the Nigeria Peering and Interconnection Forum next week. I arrive Tuesday and depart Saturday. There are many ways to reach me: roderick.beck@networksourcing.net or WhatsApp using either 00-36-70-6055144 or 00-372-5855-6840.
Post a Comment
Read more