Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

 More News About Facebook W Cable It is important to remember that the Facebook's W cable design is not finished. But reliable sources suggest it will originate at a Georgia or South Carolina CLS and first land at Nigeria. From there it will go to South Africa, probably Capetown Teracco campus. Then it sails for Kenya and up from Kenya to Oman before landing at Mumbai. Oman is becoming a telecom hub with Ooredoo hosting the 2Africa CLS. I would not be surprised if they also host W. By the way, branching units may be a better way to incorporate more countries into this cable network. Yes, my hands are not steady. I got Cs in Art in high school. 😀

Telecom Egypt is a PTT whereas Mobily is a competitive Saudi Arabian mobile operator. Few details are available. Competitive players are becoming more involved in connecting Middle Eastern countries both to reduce their own costs and create strategic alliances. Mobily is following game plan as Vodafone and Bharti Airtel. As mobile voice and data traffic becomes increasingly international, mobile providers acquire more international capacity. Typically, they buy more than they need themselves because bigger purchases have lower per bit costs. Then sell the excess capacity in the wholesale market. Most likely the cable will be unrepeatered due to the short distance between the Saudi Arabian Duba CLS on the Red Sea and its Egyptian counterpart, the new Sharm El Sheik CLS. The yellow circle is Duba. Article: https://lnkd.in/dcBJXk8Y https://www.connectingafrica.com/connectivity/telecom-egypt-mobily-subsea-cable-to-link-saudi-egypt

 The network topology was originally designed to bypass both the Red Sea and Egypt. Instead, the cable goes from Sify's Mumbai CLS to a branching unit near Bubar. It splits North to land at Barka, Oman, whereas the main trunk heads Southwest to land at Salalah, Oman. Then back to sea to Djibouti, the Internet gateway to a group of landlocked African states like Ethiopa and South Sudan. From Djibouti it heads North through the Red Sea to come ashore at Duba, Saudi Arabia. The cable goes terrestrial from this point up to a modern carrier neutral data center at Aqaba, Jordan. Then the terrestrial route crosses into Israel and eventually terminates at the Sparkle CLS near Tel Aviv. From there it traverses the Mediterranean Sea to ultimately come ashore at Marseille and Genoa. Marseille Interxion and a Milano data center campus called Stack Infrastructure are the key European subsea cable POPs. The Genoa POP is Equinix GN1.  I am a bit disappointed because early reports suggested the Re

Marseille with its 16 cables tightly squeezed into reserved sea lanes and landing facilities violates the cardinal rule of network diversity. It's highly efficient, but resiliency requires physical diversity. In general, resiliency costs money because it requires not relying solely on the big interconnection points. There is a fundamental conflict between minimizing costs and maximizing network performance. This has led consortiums and the digital titans to seek other landing points. Besides being a long distance from Marseille and on a separate power grid, Genoa offers lower latency access to Italy's eyeballs as well as Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe. It has clear advantages. Landing cables at Genoa is more challenging than Marseille because there is less deep sea and more continental shelf. The cables must be threaded between Sardinia, Corsica, and Italy. As the relief map shows, this important ship corridor is more shallow. So the cables must

Marseille was formerly a telecom backwater. It was a minor POP location. But then several things happened. The UK lost its super telecom hub status because it had become almost a single point of failure. Virtually every Atlantic cable linking the two continents landed in Cornwall, England. Secondly, Brexit meant that the UK was no longer part of Europe proper, but rather a political anomaly on its periphery. Thirdly, the Digital Titans recognized that most Asian-Europe traffic Asia was bound for the European continent. Latency could be sharply reduced by going up the Red Sea, across Egypt, and then traverse the Mediterranean to Southern European landings. Finally, traffic originating in Asia and destined for Europe was growing rapidly. So the bureaucrats of the Port Authority of Marseille built segregated landing facilities and sea lanes. Permit application process was streamlined so only one office was involved. Secure facilities were set up for power feeds. By the end of 2026, 16 cab