Firmina - The Other Atlantic Leviathan

 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 at spectrum on the system also known as virtual fibre pairs. Google uses capacity sales to recoup capex and also seed a vibrant telecom ecosystem. Interestingly enough, the main trunk has 16 fibre pairs whereas the Brazil branch has 24 fibre pairs. This does not make obvious sense to me. My guess is that this an upgrade option so that a new deep sea cable can be installed and then connected to the branching unit when Firmina has reached end of life. I believe any carrier that wants to a player in the South American market must purchase Firmina capacity. Right now Telxius has a virtual lock on the market so its competitors will be looking for Firmina as their salvation. 

My understanding is that Firmina deployment has been relatively smooth and that a go live date in the first half of 2025 is plausible. The price of 100Gs between US data centers and Brazil have been steadily declining. It will be interesting to see if Firmina crashes the market. I believe many South American ISPs hope so. 😀

A map of the new fibre optic subsea cable known as Firmina.



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