Anjana - The Atlantic's New Leviathan

 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. That means physical diversity. 

Meta has left the door open for capacity sales on the system and I would expect Telxius to be a likely fibre pair buyer. EXA is also a likely candidate for a fibre pair or spectrum IRU. Northern Spain allows Facebook to distribute its traffic to Southern Europe and also send some via terrestrial fibre to Marseille and Lisbon for undersea delivery to Africa and the Middle East. Anjana's deployment began mid-2023 and it is likely to be ready early next year. Like most Meta cables I expect aluminium to be the power conductor unlike the standard copper. This has become a trademark signature of Meta cables. Although the voltage drop is greater for aluminium than copper, the former is lighter and so the conductor can be thicker. Hence less voltage drop for a thicker aluminium conductor than a slimmer copper counterpart. 

Map of the Fibre Optic Subsea Cable Known as Anjana

Area where the Mrytle Beach CLS and Beach Manhole Are Located


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