Posts

Another Google Trans-Atlantic Cable Has Landed: Nuvem

Image
Reliable sources indicate that Google's 16 fiber pair Nuvem (Portuguese for 'cloud') cable has landed. There is typically a lag of a year between landings and RFS. So expect the system to be fully activated next Spring. I assume, without any insider knowledge, that either EXA or Telxius will acquire spectrum or a fiber pair on Nuvem. The cable's design capacity is 384 Tbps. Nuvem lands at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, also home to Anjana and Firmina. For Google, which owns the South Atlantic Firmina cable, this solves a big problem. It can move traffic between South America and Europe via the Myrtle Beach CLS. It also diversifies the routing of Google's Atlantic traffic and reduces latency for both the Southern US and Southern Europe. Interestingly enough, Google used a subsidiary as the landing partner at Myrtle Beach, and at Sines, Portugal. The hyperscalers are becoming increasingly vertically integrated. In the past it was customary to outsource landings and cab...
Post a Comment
Read more

East Africa 100G 2Africa Offerings

Image
Mombasa Icolo 1/Djibouti CLS; $23,500 MRC; 3 Years. Protected backhaul to Djibiouti data center only $1,050 extra. 🙂  Mombasa Icolo 2/JB Terraco; $25,400 MRC; 3 Years. Backhaul protected.
Post a Comment
Read more

Japanese Break Bandwidth Record: 450 Tbps On A Single Standard Fibre Pair

Image
The National Institute of IT and Communication Technology (NICT) in Japan has been diligently working for many years on dramatically increasing fibre optic bandwidth by using a wider spectrum range than the traditional C and L bands. The long haul fibre optic networks have relied exclusively on the C and L bands because they offer the lowest optical attenuation for silicon-based fibre optics. Light in these frequency bands fades and loses strength relatively slowly as it passes through fibre optic glass. But as the chart below shows, the C and L bands comprise just a fraction of the available spectrum that lasers can use.  In this trial the NICT achieved 450 Tbps on a repeatered London metro fibre pair connecting Telehouse London to the University of London. Because existing optical amplifiers are designed to work only in the C and L bands, NICT has spent years developing amplifiers optimized for the O, E, S, and U bands. These bands required that the fibre optic strands in the am...
Post a Comment
Read more

Express AAE1 Marseille/Singapore 100G: $26.5K MRC

Image
RTD: 135 milliseconds. Term: 1 Year. Only one wave available.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Anthropic xAI Deal Is An Admission Of Failure

Image
The chart shows US business paid AI subscription growth. Musk's AI company is in last place. He shoved xAI into SpaceX in order to siphon off SpaceX cash flow and IPO proceeds to finance his struggling venture. On its own, no one would lend to xAI given its third tier position in the AI service and its $1 billion per month cash burn. Now Anthropic is leasing a huge chunk of xAI data center capacity to estimate its models. Supposedly worth about $1.25 billion per month. I say supposedly because contracts can vary from rock solid to as soft as jello. Indeed, some industry contracts are really just letters of intent, non-binding expressions of customer interest. In this case both sides can cancel the agreement with only 90 days notice. Again, the Musk cheerleaders are prematurely celebrating. What this deal implies is that there's very little demand for xAI's models. So just as X pivoted from social media platform to AI, it is now pivoting to the AI data center b...
Post a Comment
Read more

More Details On The 2Africa Cable Design & Capacity

Image
The standard description is that 2Africa is a 16 fibre pair cable with 180 Tbps throughput. It comes right off the 2Africa website. That public figure is a bit misleading. Only the Mediterranean and Red Sea segments have 16 pairs. The all-important West Coast segment has 8. Now these fibre pairs should individually be capable of 20 Tbps or slightly more. So West Coast transmission capacity probably does total 180 Tbps. Indeed, the Mediterranean segment could easily exceed 320 Tbps. And the same for the yet unfinished Red Sea segment. Design Capacity By Segment A. Mediterranean Sea: 16. B. Red Sea: 16. Not finished due to hostilities. C. Red/East Africa: 7. D. Red Sea/India: 9. E. West Coast: 8.
Post a Comment
Read more

Starlink IPO Prospectus Insights: Huge Negative Cash Flow

Image
The chart below shows the issue. Total 2025 investments totaled $19.5 billion, yet the 1Q2026 investment alone was $16 billion. So unless the first quarter is an outlier, we are looking at $80 billion spent this year with most of it on an AI business that grew 22% in 2025 versus openAI's 230%. Note that xAI's recent deal with Anthropic does not necessarily improve the situation. This contract involves using xAI's data centers to train Anthropic large language models. Contracts of this nature are often closer to letters of intent than hard revenue commitments. And while such a deal might generate a lot more revenue, it will probably also require Starlink to spend more money on power, buy more GPUs, and the like. In other words, this deal might increase the company's negative cash flows. Starlink's current debt at the end of the first quarter of 2026 was $26 billion. The IPO will provide ample cash to wipe the slate clean, but there is a clear risk given that Musk is ...
Post a Comment
Read more