The Most Important Subsea Cables Going Live In 2025: Firmina

  •  Firmina is a spatial division multiplexing 16 fibre pair cable with initial design capacity of 320 Tbps.
  • It is named after a Brazilian abolitionist, Maria Firmina dos Reis, who was Brazil's first novelist.
  • Google is the owner. Telxius has acquired a fibre pair on the system as part of a complex deal that involves providing landing and back haul in Brazil. Right now Google is selling fibre pair and spectrum capacity to recoup its capex. Cirion Technologies has also purchased a pair. Stonepeak Investments, an  infrastructure investor, purchased Lumen's South American assets which operate today as Cirion.
  • Firmina is substantially complete, but no RFS announcement so far. 

Distinguishing Features:

1. It is possible to power the entire cable from either the US or Brazilian landing stations in case the other CLS experiences a black out. 

2. Firmina is the third South American hyperscaler subsea cable. Google is the owner of all three. 

3. Firmina is the first spatial division multiplexing cable serving South America.

4. Firmina continues a recent American trend of landing diversification by using South Carolina as the terrestrial bridge to the Continental US. South Carolina is also closer to the Miami telecom hub than landings to the North in Virginia and New Jersey.

5. First open cable business model for South America. This means that all fibre pair and spectrum owners select their own DWDM technologies. Common infrastructure includes the cable landing stations, some of the back haul fibre routes, and the power feed equipment.

5. Google characterizes Firmina as a low latency cable, but RTDs have not been publicly disclosed. If they are sufficiently low, financials might be tempted to use it as a backup to the Seaborn cable which enjoys the lowest latency between the B3 data center and its American counteparts in New Jersey (BATS, NASDAQ, and NYSE). The Brazilian stock exchanges keeps its computer at B3. Main draw back is that both Seabras-1 and Firmina use the Praia Grande CLS. 

Firmina represents Google's third foray into South America as a subsea cable owner after its Curie and Monet projects. It is the first spatial division multiplexing hyperscaler cable to link Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil to the US with landings in Myrtle beach and also at the Praia Grande, Brazil CLS (also home to the Malbec and Seabras-1 subsea networks). 

Firmina dwarfs existing South/North American cable systems:

Globenet: 9.2 Tbps. Four fibre pairs.

Seabras-1: 75 Tbps. Can be upgraded to at least 108 Tbps. Six fibre pairs.

Brusa: 160 Tbps. Eight fibre pairs.

Monet: 64 Tbps. Six fibre pairs.

SAM-1: 20 Tbps. Four fibre pairs. 

Firmina: 320 Tbps. Sixteen pairs. 

I forecast 100Gs US/Brazil falling well below $10K per month with $5K possible on 3 year contracts.

Map Of Google's Firmina Fibre Optic Subsea Cable|

 

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