Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

This project is building a hybrid terrestrial-subsea network for Norway. The subsea portion is designed to link Norwegian cities on the West Coast. Building terrestrially between these cities is very expensive unless existing conduit is used. So the only cost effective approach to provide a route diverse to existing telecom rights of way is to go underwater. All Viking routes are 86 fibre pairs. The terrestrial routes connect not only the country's key telecom hotels, but also many of the major hyperscaler facilities as well as all of the cable landing stations. The Far North segment is for NATO and the Norwegian military. Norway shares a border with Mother Russia.  Viking's sales policy is to avoid the high overhead associated with lit services such as wavelengths. So only dark fibre will be leased or sold as IRUs. Dark fibre providers have very low operating costs. They can be run on a skelton crew. Fibre repair is always outsource to third parties. Simple devices can be inst

  It is not enough to have Equiano capacity into Lagos. You need to reach the offnet Equinix, Rack Centre, and Medallion data centres. Transmission Co's metro Lagos network delivers them all. We offer 10G, 100G, and 400G wavelengths on an optically amplified metro fibre ring connecting the must-have carrier neutral data centres. Contact me for more info and a proposal. We can provide inexpensive wavelengths between OADC, MDXI Equinix, and Rack Centre with the two Medallion sites on-net by 1Q2025. We offer the best performance and pricing. Our founder and CEO, Mark Tinka, is a well respected network engineer who was head of Seacom engineering for over a decade. Let's do a deal! Provisioning is two weeks max.

Marseille/Singapore; 10G; AAE1; $3200. Dallas Equinix/Ashburn Equinix; $2200. Singapore/Tokyo; ADC; 100G; $15K. Mumbai/Singapore; Via Chennai landing; 100G; $22K. Lisbon/Lagos; Equiano; 10G; $7500. Lisbon/South Africa; Equiano; 100G; $25K. Milano/Palermo; 100G; 2000€. Lisbon/Madrid; 100G; 1100€. Ashburn Equinix/Paris; Dunant; $5750. Milano/Thessaloniki; 100G; $7500. 

 A few days I wrote that Facebook was planning a new subsea cable directly linking the US East Coast to South Africa, then up to India, and then to Australia, and finally to the US West Coast. Clearly resiliency is a big theme. It avoids Lisbon, Egypt, the Red Sea, and Singapore. All choke points due to their telecom hub status. Note that the map below shows lots of branching units, but I don't have insider confirmation although they make perfect sense. The cable is 16 fibre pairs.  This cable may be heavily influenced by AI considerations. AI data centres require lots of space and power. The US, South Africa, India, and Australia are good candidates for AI data centres in terms of space. All of them except for South Africa have modern power grids. But South Africa is still the best place on the continent for large scale AI facilities. An AI theme makes particular sense given the cable's high latency. An AI data centre does not directly serve customers. It is a

The advent of 2Africa and Equiano cables will make the older African cables like WACS, ACE, and MainOne stranded assets in those markets where they compete head-to-head against the former. Both 2Africa and Equiano are much higher capacity systems; this means a lower cost per bit. There are big economies of scale in network equipment. But the biggest difference is that high capacity does not entail higher subsea maintenance charges. The annual fees paid to the cable ships do not depend on lit capacity. It is quite possible that Equiano pays far less than WACS due to Google's bargaining power and the fact the cable is buried deeper and avoids the dangerous subterranean canyons where a disproportionate number of African subsea faults happen. The maintenance charge is effectively insurance which should reflect the degree of risk. So Equino's cost per bit as a function of the fixed annual repair fee could be much less than for ACE, MainOne, and WACS. Equiano's design transmissio

Despite nonsense about both appointments being 'woke', Paula Cogan retired from EUNetworks after a very successful fund raising effort that raised enough cash to enable massive network building. Kathy Johnson joined Lumen in late 2022 when the company was floundering due to a high debt to revenue ratio and made the hard choices that her male predecessors could not. The stock price agrees. Johnson raised cash by selling off Lumen's South American and European assets including the South American and Atlantic cables. It is generally agreed that the buyers overpaid. I suspect these changes are just the beginning. Her talks focus on corporate culture and my impression of the wholesale service provider telecom industry is that its culture stinks. Unable to provide accurate quotes on the spot, limited product innovation, meetings from 8 AM to 10 PM, provisioning so lethargic it looks like slow motion video, and 1990 era automation. The real barrier to profitability is the people s

Several sources have whispered in my ear that META is planning a new 16 fibre pair cable that will encompass the world going from the US East Coast to the US West Coast via the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and the Pacific. The most ambitious subsea project ever undertaken. I do not know the exact routing. I know that the cable will launch from the American East Coast and will go down the West African Coast to South Africa and then head straight to Mumbai. It is not clear if Europe will be online or not. From Mumbai it will indubitably go to Singapore with possible branches to Australia and Japan. Clearly one branch will make a direct line to the Californian coast.  This semi-secret cable reflects META's desire for network resiliency given the four month Red Sea down time that AAE-1 and other subsea work horses suffered during the first half of 2024. It appears willing to suffer a latency penalty to avoid the Red Sea as well as Egypt's expensive digital toll roads. While Egypt's

Most Layer 1 bandwidth buyers focus their efforts on EXA's three Hibernia Atlantic cables, Aquacoms' AEC-1 and AEC-2 assets, and Marea and Dunant. As a group, those subsea networks probably account for 80% of wavelength transactions across the Pond. Two lesser well known alternatives are Amitié and Grace Hopper. Amitié means friendship in French. Not surprisingly, it connects Boston via a Lynn, Massachusetts landing at a Hibernia CLS to Bordeaux, France. This spatial division multiplexing 16 fibre pair main trunk cable is a Meta project. Meta owns 80% of the network capacity with the balance held by the minority partners of Orange, Vodafone, and Aquacoms. To be more precise, Amitié branches in the Eastern Atlantic to the UK and France. Twelve fibre pairs land at Bude, Cornwall, and sixteen pairs at the Orange La Porge CLS, a short distance from Bordeaux. Note that 16 pairs land in the US, but a total of 28 on the European side. The branching unit is using optical switching to

I n 2005 there were 7 high c apacity Trans- Atl antic subsea fibre optic networks connecting North  Americ a to Europe. Flag had two cables, Hibernia  Atl antic two as well, Level3 owned the Yellow cable, Global Crossing had  AC1, the PTTs owned TAT-14,  and  Apollo h ad two. In most cases the cables landed in either Ireland or the UK with most traffic destined for downtown London telecom hotels like the various partitions of Telehouse London (East & North at that time). London was Europe's key telecom hub. The other two important hubs were Frankfurt and  Amsterd am.  At the time Teli a Carrier was buying 10G waves 60 Hudson to Telehouse East for $38K a month. But that did not last long.  There was chronic excess capacity due to zombie subsea cables. In most industries if rates of return are depressed, firms exit the industry with their assets sold to be used in other sectors. Consequently, the industry produces less and prices rise pushing up cash flow margins. Not so in tel

EXA has emerged as the dominant player on the Atlantic routes. Its original subsea network consisted of the the highly diverse North and South Hibernia cables complemented by the much faster and younger Express cable.  North EXA cable was RFS 2001. It connects London & New York via landings highly diverse to its competitors. North lands in Canada at Halifax and at Southport, UK. In contrast, most Atlantic cables land near New York City and in Cornwall near Bude. North's diversity makes it an excellent choice for network planners focusing on resiliency. Obviously, the cable's latency is high, but that is generally the tradeoff one must accept to achieve physical diversity. I think the RTD 60 Hudson/Telehouse London is probably 76 ms. dfs South EXA cable was also RFS 2001. It lands at the same CLS as North on both sides of the Atlantic. I believe the latency is slightly higher.  Express was built much later (RFS 2015). It is designed to be the lowest latency path from LD4 Slo

The Atlantic at the 100G level ranges from $4K to $6K MRC. The cables deployed at or around the time of the New Millenium vary from $3,800 to $5K. Generally, new cables like Marea and Dunant command a premium because they directly connect Ashburn Equinix to Continental Euroipe with both Ashburn Equinix and at least two Paris Equinix facilities onünet. Both bypass Ireland and the British isles. So expect to pay in the $5K to $6K range on 2 or 3 year terms. And yes, you should pay the premium because Marea, Dunant, Anjana, and Nuveem all dramatically improve resiliency. The NYC/London cooridor is congested with most UK landings in Cornwall at Bude. Furthermore, UK surveillance of undersea cables is well known.  Any saavy buyer should be riding both NYC/London cables and also cables like Dunant and Marea that directly link Ashburn Equinix to the European continent. This physical diversity is not a luxury; it's essential. A special mention goes to EXA Express for NYC/London which is a

Eastern Light is building a hybrid subsea-terrestrial dark fibre ring connecting Sweden, Finland, the Baltics, Germany, Denmark, and Norway. This morning I interviewed their sales director to better understand this ambitious project. The fibre pair count is 3x 144 pairs or 432 in total. No lit optical circuits or wavelengths will be sold. Instead, customers will be leasing or purchasing via IRU fibre pairs that they will light using their own equipment. There are ILAs for the subsea spans located   on islands, but the short distances make them an option, not a necessity. However, some customers will undoubtedly prefer buying less and optically amplifying to juice the transmission rates. Because it is a dark fibre network, the customer base will be predominantly hyperscalers, big carriers including the incumbents (Telia's internationl network is old), university research consortiums, governments including their national militaries, NATO, and banks. In particular, hyperscalers are ex

Mist delayed due to hard rock at Indian CLS. Construction teams find the rock between the CLS and the beach manhole is too hard for directional drilling. A new path around the rock is required.  SMW6 will only go live in 2026.  APG down 12 months since start of 2023. Cursed cable.  2Africa struggling due to delays in the Northeastern Africa quadrant.  Bifrost behind schedule. Ground breaking on the Jakarta CLS was just in June and just a few days ago for the second CLS. Figure late 2025.  Peace cable is cheap in part because 40% of potential customers will not use it because Chinese companies built and equipped it. . Equiano 10G prices are relatively high because many carriers only offering 100G. There is a dearth of 10G providers.  Anjana and Firmina on schedule because neither cable is a consortium. Consortiums are too slow and make mediocre decisions.  Bay of Bengal Gateway capacity is low and prices rising.  2Africa 100G prices between Mombasa and South Africa are sky high in the $

 Like Anjana , Firmina is a content provider project. Google is the owner and bank for the 16 fibre pair (main trunk) spatial division multiplexing cable. The subsea network will connect the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina cable landing station to a Telxius CLS in Praia Grande (near Sao Paulo) and two other landings in Uruguay and Argentina. I think Google picked South Carolina because it represents a good latency compromise as some of the traffic is destined for Miami and some for Ashburn Equinix. It also improves the Google network's overall resiliency and its cloud infrastructure. I have noticed that Google has a tendency to run its fibre pairs at lower transmission speeds than Facebook. The design transmission rate for this system is 15 Tbps per pair whereas Facebook's Anjana is 20 terabits. So Firmina's design aggregate transmission rate day one is 240 Tbps. A quarter of a petabit.  Telxius has purchased a fibre pair on life-of-system IRU. I expect others will be looking

 Anjana - The New Atlantic Leviathan Meta's Anjana cable will set a new record for Atlantic bandwidth with 24 fibre pairs each operating at 20 terabits for a total of 480 Tbps. It goes without saying that the cable is a spatial division multiplexing design. There has been a steady move South for new US cable landings over the last 15 years; Anjana is no exception. Around 2000 all Trans-Atlantic networks landed near New York or Boston. Then Marea and Dunant landed at Virginia Beach so they could directly link to Ashburn Equinix at the lowest possible latency as well as avoid 'hot spots' like New York. Now Anjana will land at Mrytle Beach, South Carolina. The farthest point South for a Atlantic cable connecting Europe +and North America. See the CLS and beach manhole below. In Europe Anjana will land on Spain's North Coast at the new Telxius CLS in the city of Santander. Resiliency is the name of the game in the subsea cable world. Meta has left the door open for capacit

A lot of private equity money has been funneled into telecom infrastructure investments. My impression is that returns have been poor largely because the funds don't really understand the challenges in making wholesale operators successful. The key ingredient is not technology. That is available to all. Anyone who has the money can have Ciena's latest version of Wave Logic. It is the ability of management to run a nimble, lean operation that leads to success and very few high profile telecom managers understand that point. Sales cycles must be short and provisioning even shorter. Most managers chosen to run new projects come from staid, often incumbent telecommunication service providers that try to solve problems by throwing bodies at them. They are highly risk averse so they throw sand in the cogs by allowing lawyers to dictate the pace at which everything moves. I have seen customer NDAs with four pages devoted to data processing alone. And NDAs don't prevent customers f

 Dubious EU Funded Submarine Projects - Polar Connect. The EU embodies activist government. It is seeding a large number of digital infrastructure projects many of which have only a small chance of success. My nomination for the most dubious EU-backed subsea cable initiative is Polar Connect. The idea is to connect Europe to Asia via a subsea cable that is deployed directly under the polar cap to link Japan to Europe. The backers of this plan include NorduNet, the Swedish Research Council, and others. EU has committed 5.6 million Euros to the project over three years for initial design and research.  This project takes advantage of the EU's lack of submarine cable expertise and its perennial itch to intervene in capitalism in the belief that it has the wisdom to improve it. NorduNet has unscrupulously been tossing out capex estimates of under $250 million. This is absurd. Such a project would require a specialized cable ship plus two icebreakers. And there would have to be a sea ma

100G; $20K MRC; 1 Year Contract. 10G; $4500 MRC; 1 Year Contract.

I learned this morning that several countries including Guinea declined 2Africa membership because they rejected the open cable model. Despite a 2Africa branching unit just outside Guinea territorial waters. In other words, the Guinea government wanted to control the cable landing station. The current regime practices soft censorship by threatening journalists and media outlets that criticize the government and imposing high fines for slander against the State.  Apparently it views widespread Internet access as a threat to its existence. This is reflected in only 765 fixed broadband connections in a country of 14 million. My guess is that this explains why other African states also declined to connect to 2Africa.  Who are the other holdouts? This is sheer speculation on my part, but I find it strange that Cameroon did not participate in either Equiano or 2Africa. Its PTT may have feared increased competition in its home market due to the open cable landing model which would have ensure

The Japanese National Institute of Information and Communication set a single fibre pair transmission record of 22.9 petabits last November. To achieve it, multicore was combined with multiple frequency bands including the standard C-band, L-band (in limited production use today), and S-band. The C-band is the work horse of optical infrared transmission with a wavelength range of 1530-1550 nanometers. These wavelengths experience the least attenuation in a glass medium; they are also ideal for erbium-doped optical amplifiers. The L-band includes the 1565 to 1625 nanometer range. Its attenuation in glass is the second lowest. Arelion has used L-band in its US East Coast network. At least one Pacific cable has used L-band as well. I believe it is PLNC which connects HK to the US. The S-band ranges from 1460 to 1515 nanometers. The 'S' stands for short band. It has the third lowest attenuation in glass. The Japanese combined these three bands with a 38 core fibre strand which they

LS1/Capetown CT1; 10G; Equiano; $6500 MRC.  Marseille/Singapore; Peace; $20K per month; 1 year.  Marseille/Singapore; AAE1; $24K a month; 2 year.  Singapore/Tokyo; ADC; $15K on a 3 year.  Mombasa/Marseille; $45K MRC; 1 year.  10x or more 100G European waves; 925€ per wave; 3 years.  Lagos/LS1; $20K; 2 years.  NY4 Secaucus Equinix/Ashburn Equinix; $1300; 3 years.  Ashburn Equinix/Telehouse 2 Paris; Dunant; $5250; 3 year.  Dallas Equinix/Ashburn Equinix; $2400; 3 year. 

Coherent optics is converging to the Shannon limit. The Shannon limit represents the upper bound on information transfer for an optical channel. The gap between Shannon and various modulation schemes is shrinking. Note that the higher the transfer rate, the lower the optical reach. A lower optical reach means more OEM or optical amplification and this is an outcome carriers wish to avoid. These sort of tradeoffs permeate optical transmission. No free lunch. 

1. Capacity Shortages Abound ... A. Marseille/Singapore route remains tight due to limited SWM5 and AAE1 spare capacity. Impact of Peace Cable is not clear..  B. The 2Africa cable appears delayed a few months and it is a blow to East African ISPs looking for relief from limited capacity and high prices. The 100G prices even on the active Kenya/SA 2Africa segment lie in the $50K to $80K MRC range due to Seacom and Eassy cable depletion. 2. The 100G prices for the NYC and Ashburn Equinix to Fortaleza and Sao Paulo routes range from $7K to $12K per month. 3. A new West African cable is desperately needed to rescue those left behind after the Equiano and 2Africa Raptures: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Bissau, Gambia, and others like Cameroon and Angola. I think there is a chance that Cameroon did not join the 2Africa consortium due to objections to the open cable landing stations. 4. Curie cable connecting LA to South America is really expensive. Overpriced. 5. I expect two new Trans-Atla

The IAX cable links Chennai and Mumbai to Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Jio Reliance and China Mobile are the primary consortium members but press releases suggest there is a silent digital giant partner as well. An educated guess would be Google, Microsoft or Facebook. Information is scarce on the system. It will likely be 16 pairs like its IEX counterpart. This suggests that design capacity will easily exceed 200 Tbps. India desperately more bandwidth, but given Jio's leading role it is not clear it will lower Layer 1 pricing. On the flip side, China Mobile would be unlikely to participate in a project unless it could provide end-to-end connectivity to its customers. So I believe modest optimism is the correct frame of mind.