More On Blue Raman - The Definitive Topology

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 suggested the Red Sea would be avoided with the terrestrial route hugging the Red Sea coast. I think what happened is that it was simply too expensive. Furthermore, a direct across-the- Saudi Arabian desert route from Oman would have been incredibly expensive, but not have served country's main cities. Furthermore, repairs would take a long time because there is no local tech force in the deep desert. 

So Blue-Raman will traverse the Red Sea, but enjoy physical diversity vis-a-vis Egypt. Bypassing Egypt is more than a diversity play. It is a cost advantage given that Egypt Telecom's transit fees are high. Furthermore, the PTT insists on installing the 100G and 400G wave cards itself at its landing stations and charging an upfront installation fee ($100K to $200K) per 100G wave lit plus maintenance charges. The costs are artificially elevated; it's monopoly pricing. This setup also leads to slow circuit provisioning which costs the carriers revenue since customers that are ready to accept the service must often wait months for delivery. 

Nonetheless Blue-Raman should be a very sexy system. It should help to undermine India's high bandwidth costs by bringing a big slab of capacity onto the market. Sify manages the Mumbai CLS, which is a plus too. Sify is a competitive carrier, not an incumbent looking for price stability and a cost advantage over the Tier 2 ISPs challenging it. Google chose Sify because it trusts the carrier to act responsibly in managing the open Mumbai cable landing station. Open means that each carrier selects its own DWDM kit and that the CLS is operated as if it was a carrier neutral facility. If Blue-Raman lives up to its potential, then the path is paved for a longer cable connecting Europe to Singapore that also bypasses the Egyptian fibre optic toll roads. In fact, extending Raman to Singapore is a natural next step. This would provide the real, physically diverse competition to SMW5, SWM6, Peace, and AAE1.