Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

 CNN reports that two American government officials say the most likely explanation for the outages is simple irresponsible behavior by a Chinese cargo ship dragging its anchor. This contrasts sharply with German and Finnish officials who have insisted on sabotage. My own take is that the Americans are right. Nothing about the sabotage hypothesis is convincing.  There is no recorded incident of state sabotage of subsea cables since the end of WWII.  Fishing boats and cargo ships dragging their anchors are responsible for 70% of outages with the balance due to events such as debris slides in subsea canyon, loss of power, subsea earthquakes going mudslides, etc. Historical data provides no examples of state targeting of subsea fibre optic infrastructure. Most subsea cables are buried 1 to 2 meters deep to prevent damage. So locating them is difficult even for cable repair ships. Repair of the subsea cable SWM5 was delayed several weeks because the ship could not locate the cable which ha

"Two subsea cables located in the Baltic Sea have recently reported faults. BCS East-West cable reportedly experienced a fault at 08:00 on Sunday 17th November and the C-Lion cable reportedly experienced a fault at 02:00 on Monday 18th November (times UTC).  There has been speculation and opinion shared on social media and from news outlets as to the causes of these two subsea cable faults. Many commentators have pointed towards deliberate action. However, at this stage there is no evidence to make any conclusive statement. Particularly since the Nord Stream Pipeline was damaged in 2022, the security of critical undersea infrastructure has been a central topic of discussion, and action, for both industry and government. For these and future incidents it is prudent to consider the following: -       The primary causes of cable damage in Northern European waters are commercial fishing or ship anchors, with a smaller proportion of faults caused by natural hazards (seafl

Southern Cross subsea cable system is implementing ODUflex, which is a relatively new ITU standard that allows granular Layer 1 bandwidth. No longer are we limited to 100G, 400G, and 800G for either subsea or terrestrial networks. Interestingly enough, Hauwei proposed the new standard and was its primary champion. All wavelengths consist of optical containers and ODUflex allows optical containers to be stacked at 1.25 Gps intervals. So you can lease 1.25 Gbps wavelength up to 400G in 1.25 Gbps increments. Note that port sizes are still 10G, 100G, 400G or 800G. So to access a 150G transmission rate the customer needs 400G intefaces. Ciena is one of the the vendors to implement ODUflex along with Hauwei. More details here: https://lnkd.in/dZvNbubc. It is worth noting that granular bandwidth is being implemented on the newer cables which Southern Cross owns like Next.  The commercial motivation is poor take up of 400G wavelengths. The only real customers for 400Gs are very big bandwidth

C-Lion Cable Down In Baltic Sea C-Lion is an 8 fibre pair high capacity linear cable that went live in 2016. Transmission rate is 144 Tbps. The cable connects Helsinki data centers to Frankfurt via a cable traversing the Baltic Sea. C-Lion lands at Rostock, Germany, and at Helsinki. The Finnish government financed, owns, and operates the subsea network in the national interest. One goal of the project was to reduce network dependence on third country transit via Sweden or the Baltics. Another was to provide enough capacity to grow the Finnish data center market.  Finland offers many advantages for large data centers. Its cool climate dramatically lowers cooling costs as well as extending server life spans. There is also attractively priced, reliable, and abundant power in the form of hydro, nuclear, and wind. I think the large Google data center in Hamina, Finland opened the government's eyes to the economic potential that subsea capacity unlocks. Indeed, Google announced just a fe

Google's Firmina cable is a 16 fibre pair spatial division multiplexing cable that connects its Myrtle Beach CLS in South Carolina to Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina. Firmina was one of Brazil's first notable writers and novelists. The cable is on the verge of RFS with the wet segments done and the focus on securing back haul, equipment installation, and testing. Design capacity is 240 Tbps. The cable is open. This means each fibre pair or spectrum owner selects the Layer 1 technology vendor such as Ciena or Infinera. Hence Firmina is technology agnostic. This reflects the fact that subsea optical amplifiers are compatible with all DWDM manufacturers and hence there is no compelling reason for capacity owners to chose the same terminal equipment. The main reason for doing so was the consortium model where a single operating entity was created to manage the physical assets on behalf of the members. But this model lead to conservative, status quo decision making. Google and the ot

Several data centre companies have asked for my thoughts on potential data centre sites that could exploit nearby subsea cable landings. Obviously there is a need for a new data centre in Marseille diverse to the Interxion sites. In fact, Telehouse Europe has such a plan, already has purchased a plot of land, and has LOIs from long haul carriers to bring it online. Quadrivium is retrofitting a former corporate data facility in Genoa to leverage 2Africa, Blue Raman, and the other cables that call it their home.  Trieste is my nomination for a future cable landing station and Internet gateway. The city has a large port that could easily accommodate subsea cables. Furthermore, the latency of an intercontinental subsea network landing in Trieste and delivering traffic to Milano, Zurich, Vienna, and Frankfurt is definitely lower than routing via Marseille and even Genoa. So Trieste offers diversity without a latency penalty for central Europe and Scandinavia.  Trieste was a great port city

The private credit company P Capital Partners has ousted this ambitious project's founders and seized control. It appears P Capital extended a loan to finance Eastern Light back in 2021. As is standard, the debt covenants probably included the right to oust management and become the company's owner if certain conditions were not met. The new owners specialize in offering high interest rate, loans so that companies can avoid equity dilution. According to the company's press release, prior management was unable to meet the key requirement of new equity financing. Hence they were fired. It is important to understand how these greenfield projects work. Generally, founders invest money in the project as equity. Since these projects are unlikely to generate cash flow for many years, equity is the appropriate financing. The project is high risk and can only be justified if there are high returns.  Banks and other credit providers generally finance projects that already are genera

Funke Opeke, the CEO and founder of MainOne, resigned after selling her firm to Equinix for $320 million. MainOne was one of the first carrier neutral data centre companies in Nigeria and its MDXI facility is almost a must-have for ISPs. MainOne began life as a subsea cable company. At some point Opeke realized that carrier neutral data centers was an attractive business due to high occupancy rates and significant customer switching costs. Moreover, since African data centers often lack good connectivity, the MainOne cable was an excellent complement to any data center facility. MainOne just opened a new facility in Ghana, one of Africa's bright spots in terms of political culture, economic development, and pluralism. Click on this for more details https://thetechcapital.com/funke-opeke-resigns-as-ceo-of-mainone-following-320m-equinix-deal/. I guess I am too woke for the old telecom guard who have often expressed me to the idea that appointing women as senior managers is '

It is important to keep in mind 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 in Nigeria. From there the cable will go to South Africa with a POP probably at the Cape Town Terraco campus. Then it sails for Kenya and up from Kenya to Oman before landing at Mumbai. Oman is becoming an important telecom hub with Ooredoo hosting the 2Africa CLS and lower connectivity costs than the UAE. I would not be surprised if Ooredoo also hosts W as well. 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 and Mobily are cooperating on a new subsea cable connecting Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Telecom Egypt is a PTT whereas Mobily is a competitive Saudi Arabian mobile operator. Few details regarding the project are available. Mobily is financing the project whereas TE is the cable landing partner. This project reflects a broad trend where competitive mobile providers are becoming more involved in connecting Middle Eastern countries both to reduce their own costs and also create strategic alliances. In fact, Mobily is following the same game plan as the much larger Vodafone and Bharti Airtel. As mobile voice and data traffic becomes increasingly international, mobile providers acquire more international capacity and often the wholesale market. Typically, they buy more than they need themselves because bigger purchases lower per bit costs. Then they sell the excess capacity in the wholesale market. This is how Bharti entered the wholesale telecom market. Most likely this new cabl

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, which is the Internet gateway for 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 suggeste

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. Indeed, there is a fundamental conflict between minimizing network costs and maximizing performance. This has led consortiums and the digital titans to seek other landing points to reduce Marseille's importance. 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. The city offers clear advantages for a landing spot.  On the down side, landing cables at Genoa is more challenging than Marseille because cables must traverse more shallow waters to reach it. Cables must be threaded between Sardinia, Corsica, and Italy.

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