Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Respect your cat. He or she is smarter than the best AI models according to the well known and highly respected AI researcher, Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Facebook.  Yann LeCun is one of the world's leading AI developers and computer scientists. He was quoted in a recent YouTube video bemoaning the primitive state of AI: "The most intelligent AI systems don't have the common sense of a house cat. We are not even close to reproducing what cats do"."We are not yet at the level of reproducing the learning processes in a domestic cat's brain". Click here for the interview .  This is more evidence for the upcoming AI industry meltdown. It will lead to a massive oversupply of data centre space. 

The EU recently gave 6 million Euros to the Northern European Polar Connect Initiative which aims to build a subsea cable connecting Japan to Europe via the Far North. See the map below for routing. NorduNet is a network linking universities and research organizations in the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway. It is taking the lead on this project which is looking at two alternatives routes to reach Asia. One route would be via the North Pole and the other via the Northwest Passage. This would give Europe access to Asia without traversing the US or Canada and hence offer better privacy and more secure communication as well much lower latency. Because the proposed paths are highly diverse to the usual suspects of Atlantic cables landing in Canada or the US, they might be attractive for resiliency purposes. One can imagine carriers splitting their traffic between the Polar routes and the more traditional cross-US routes for Pacific/European traffic. C...

 Amazon announced yesterday it is launching its Kuiper constellation service in 2025. The UK will be the first country to go live. Up to now Starlink, which has 4.6 million customers, has faced no competition. But the huge buzz around Starlink is not really warranted. Yes, it is a great technical achievement particularly given that a customer is being handed off from one service satellite to another approximately every 30 minutes. However, what ultimately matters are financial results. Undoubtedly, Starlink is bleeding lots of cash. There is no way one can build a massive network prior to significant sales and avoid it. Satellites cannot be upgraded. So they must be fully loaded from day one which sharply increases the capex. Furthermore, the key metrics determining profitability and net cash flow are unknown. These metrics include customer acquisition costs. The American CLECs mostly went under during the dotcom era because it cost too much to acquire customers. Starlink has also...

Facebook is building a six fibre pair cable directly connecting Taiwan to the the United States with landings at Toucheng, Taiwan, Hermosa Beach, California, and Manchester, California. RFS is 2Q2027. The Hermosa Beach CLS is the well known facility built by RTI Holdings before its bankruptcy. In the submarine cable landing license application, Facebook noted that its motivation was the fact that US-Taiwanese traffic is growing rapidly each year. Due to the 12,000 kilometer length of the cable and the absence of any island landings for power, the design throughput per pair is a relatively low 12.8 Tbps or 76.8 Tbps aggregate initial capacity.  ORCA is an open cable so each fibre pair owner will operate and control its own submarine line terminating equipment with only power being under collective control. Since Facebook is the cable's sole initial owner, the open architecture suggests it will sell capacity on the system to third parties to recoup capital expenditures and share comm...

 The Coming AI Crash: Faking Intelligence Versus Real Thinking Yesterday's mini-crash of AI stocks is not surprising. AI related stocks have been priced to perfection reflecting the view that AI is a revolution on par with the industrial revolution or the transition from horse to combustion engine for transportation. But the crash is just the first symptom of a greater problem, namely that the technology does not live up to the hype. The large language models are impenetrable black boxes due to their nature; they are nonlinear statistical models with huge number of parameters. It is the huge number of parameters that make them power hungry beasts of requiring GPUs to estimate them. For details on the crash itself, read https://thetechcapital.com/tech-stocks-tumble-as-deepseek-triggers-1-trillion-market-crash/.  The term 'training an AI model' means exactly the same thing as estimation of a large nonlinear statistical model like the one below. I am a time series statistica...

***5x 100Gs; CT1/LS1; Equiano The Stable Cable; $21K MRC Per Wave ***1x 100G; Johannesberg Teraco/London; WACS; $29.5K;Protected Back Haul; Photo credit: submarinenetworks.com

1. A point: London Telehouse West. Z point: Johannesburge Teraco Campus. 2. Service: 100G Wavelength. Layer 1 optical circuit. 3. MRC: $29.5K. 4. NRC: $20K. 5. South African Back Haul Protected. 6. Term: 3 Years. 7. Delivery: 4 to 8 weeks. 8. Customer responsible for cross connects. 9. Standard SLA. Map Credit: Submarinenetworks.com.

Won't last more than few days. Layer 1. 100G Wavelength. Marseille Interxion to Singapore Equinix. Buy now or your boss will forever loathe you. 😃

Microsoft has filed an application to do a geophysical survey for a new subsea fibre optic cable connecting Ireland to the UK. The Irish Maritime authority has blessed the application. Tuskar is the name of an Irish lighthouse located on a rock in the Irish Sea. It was the first Irish facility to be powered by electricity. The cable's tentative design is to land at Kilmore Quay on the Irish side with the British landing at Newgale in Wales. Again, I expect a 96 fibre pair unrepeated cable system.  Some of my readers have expressed skepticism that Microsoft would be building its own cable when there have been several carrier builds across the Irish Sea in the last five years. EUNetwork's Rockabill unrepeatered cable has 96 fibre pairs; it went live in 2019. Aquacomms CeltixConnect-2 cable is an unrepeatered system that went live March 2022. And that's not at all. Zayo has 24 fibre pairs on the power cable Interconnector East-West.  But here's the thing. I don't think...

Microsoft has applied for several maritime usage licenses to do ship geophysical surveys of proposed routes for new subsea cables connecting Ireland to the UK. Its SOBR2 cable will connect Ireland to Wales as opposed to the usual Cornwall landings. It will apparently land at Malahide Beach or Portmarnock on the Irish side. Another possibility is a branch with a landing at both Malahide and Portmarnock. Details are very sparse on the cable itself. My educated guess would be a 96 pair unrepeatered cable because it minimizes capex while maximizing bandwidth punch with such systems easily pushing a couple petabits per second. The site survey will focus on the top three meters of the sea floor. It will take samples to ascertain the texture and composition of material with an eye towards a deep burial of the cable itself if possible. The samples will help determine not only burial depth but also how well armoured the cable will be. The Irish Sea is notorious for fibre cuts due to trawler fis...

Lisbon/Lagos; 100G; Equiano; $19K; 2 years. Mumbai//Singapore; 100G; $20K; 3 years. Coresite 1Wilshire/NY4; 100G; $3900; 3 years. Dallas Equinix/Ashburn Equinix; 100G; $2200; 3 years. Singapore Equinix/Tokyo Equinix; 100G; $15000; 3 years. Nikhef/AM5; Linear Dark Fibre Pair; 350 Euros; 3 years. Milan/Athens; 100G; $6500; 3 years. NY4/SP4; 100G; $8500; 3 years. Ashburn Equinix/Telehouse 2; 100G; Dunant; $5800; 3 years.

I predicted a couple months ago that EXA was consolidating the Atlantic and would purchase Aqua Comms, which has been struggling, and whose estimated value was written down by its former owner, an infrastructure fund. An financial disclosure indicates that the buy price is a mere $54 million for all of Aqua Comms' assets. That $54 million includes the the four fibre pair AEC1, two fibre pairs on AEC2, which is a consortium project, and two Irish Sea cables. That's not very good. In fact, it is terrible. The price is probably 15% of of construction costs. It's a great contrarian EXA move because EXA can absorb the company's assets, but fire 99% of the employees. So the revenue should improve the bottom line. Aqua Comms illustrate how a lot of venture capitalists are bullish on telecom infrastructure without really understanding the challenges of making it successful (they should hire me for a lot of money to educate them). 😃 So what went wrong? Poor operational performa...

Amazon Ireland has applied for a maritime usage license to land a planned cable connecting Ireland to the United States. It is considering landing the cable near Castlefreke on Ireland's Southeast Coast in County Cork along a stretch of beach called the Strand. Amazon has made no public announcement so far. Here is the filed application . I discovered this when I came across a local Irish newspaper that mentioned that Amazon was looking at a nearby beach for a cable landing. I then did a Google search and found the filing. All these filings are posted online and they are 'leading indicators' as economists would say of what is going to happen.  No Trans-Atlantic subsea cables currently land on Ireland's South Coast other than EXA's Express and that is part of the reason that Amazon finds it so appealing. Such a cable would be physically diverse at least on the terrestrial side to the Irish Sea and older Atlantic cables like Hibernia North and South and AC1. I can nev...

Satellite competes with terrestrial broadband because they are both access technologies. But all satellite networks generate traffic for the terrestrial backbones including the subsea cables. After all, there is little content stored in space! 😃 Hence satellite Internet providers must access data centers just like every other technology in the telecom world. Inter-satellite free space laser communication will bypass the terrestrial backbones to an extent, but this is really just a drop in the bucket. It works mostly for low bandwidth applications like email and instant messaging.  The graph shows the number of objects launched into low earth orbit from 1960 onward. This includes manned space craft, satellites, and unmanned spacecraft. Note that the dominant factor is SpaceX putting Starlink LEO satellites into orbit. As of January 2025, Starlink has 6,932 in space. In addition, Amazon Kuiper is deploying 3,236 LEO birds with the bulk of the fleet flying into orbit in 2025 and 2026...

This Newsweek article insinuates that China developed cable cutting technology detailed in a patent application in order to sabotage subsea cables. It is not stated explicitly. But that is clearly the conclusion the author wants the reader to reach. Yet the underlying logic has more holes than my mother's mole infested lawn. And that's a lot of holes. 😃  1. In order to lift a damaged fibre optic cable onto a ship for repair, it must be severed in most cases because there is usually not enough slack to hoist intact aboard a ship. Secondly, an intact cable weighs a lot and is more difficult to handle than pulling up one end of a severed cable. Hence cutting intact, but damaged cables prior to repair is protocol. So cable cutting technology is not per se evidence of intent to sabotage. 2. According to the patent application mainland China faced a problem with illegal cable laying in its territorial waters This is not as strange as it sounds. For example, the Thai police discove...

Satellite competes with terrestrial broadband because they are both access technologies. But all satellite networks generate traffic for the terrestrial backbones including the subsea cables. After all, there is a little content stored in space! 😃 Hence satellite Internet providers must use data centers just like every other technology in the telecom world. Inter-satellite free space laser communication will bypass in some cases to a limited extent the terrestrial backbones, but this is really just a drop in the bucket. It works mostly for low bandwidth applications like email and instant messaging. The graph shows the number of objects launched into low earth orbit from 1960 onward. This includes manned space craft, satellites, and unmanned spacecraft. Note that the dominant factor is SpaceX putting Starlink LEO satellites into orbit. In addition, Amazon Kuiper is deploying slightly over 3,000 LEO birds with the bulk of the fleet flying into orbit in 2025 and 2026. Chin...

Long haul fibre optic bandwidth ranges from a few terabits per second into the low thirties with the equipment and operating expense sharply rising as transmission rates go up. Repeatered subsea cables generally lie in the 12 to 25 Tbps window with most spatial division multiplexing deployments pushing 12 to 20 Tbps whereas the traditional 6 to 8 pair coherent optics deployments transmit at least 20 Tbps or higher per strand.  The key factor determining the optical transmission rate is attenuation, which refers to the fact that a photon or wavelength's intensity or energy diminishes as it travels through fibre optic glass or any other medium. Light is scattered, reflected backwards or absorbed. Other variables that affect transmission rates include the number of distinct wavelength bands (dense wave division multiplexing) that can serve as distinct optical channels in a given spectrum range (usually the C band). The more channels, the higher the transmission rate. Chromatic dispers...

Might close my first 100G into India today. 🙂 I recommend focusing for the next six months on the India/Singapore roiute as Red Sea construction of IEX, 2Africa, and SWM6 is on hold due to the possibility of missile strikes. In contrast, IAX and Mist do not face these issues. I understand that both Marseille and Singapore are essential peering points, but Marseille/Mumbai is likely to be hell for the foreseeable future. Put your incremental effort where it earns the greatest incremental return. Today is it is Mumbai or Chennai to Singapore. I am always available to provide your advice and guidance on your hunt for a Great Deal. 😃 

The chart tells us that Ireland despite its low tax rates is quite costly with the highest power rates in the EU. It is often joked that a data centre is a power reseller and there's a lot of truth in that statement. For example, Equinix reports that power and cooling are 80% of its infrastructure operating expense. In general, a data centre's overall operating expense can be as much as 50% electricity. From what I can tell Irish data centre demand for electricity has grown much faster than the country's power capacity. Data centres consume 21% of Ireland's electricity versus 18% for households. This is an astonishing figure.  High German rates reflect the failed Energiewende. The system costs of wind and solar are extremely high in Germany and both sources are heavily subsidized via guaranteed tariffs because the load factors (annual capacity utilization rates) are very low. For example, a German solar farm only operates at 10% of capacity on an annual basis whereas Am...

Bad news and also mildly bad news. AAE1 is down due to a fault in the Red Sea located between the Zafrana, Egypt and Saudi branching units. The outage began December 31st. Pearls 2Africa (depicted in the map) will go live near year's end, but it has only one fibre pair down the African East Coast from Oman to Kenya. China Mobile owns it.  The Big Picture is that the subsea cable world is facing a tough year. Right now Peace is the only high capacity cable live connecting Marseille to Singapore via the Red Sea. AAE1 is down. 2Africa, SWM6, Blue-Raman, and probably IEX cannot be completed due to the threat of Red Sea missile strikes. We can only hope that diplomacy results in safe passage for the cable ships. Otherwise persistent capacity shortages will only grow worse. I do expect AAE1 to be repaired within eight weeks as a cable ship can bypass Yemen via the Suez cable. But beware most cable ships are deploying new cables like Blue and Medusa. My guess is that the Indian owned cabl...

As you know, the Rubymar dragged its anchor for 31 kilometers after its crew abandoned it last spring. In so doing it severed the AAE1, Seacom/TGN, and Eassy cables. After several months stalemate, the Houthi rebels gave the consortiums permission to repair them as long as it was done in a low key fashion. The fact that AAE1 lands in Yemen gave the Houthis political cover with their supporters. But the reality is that since then the Houthis have refused to agree to refrain from targeting cable ships laying new systems like 2Africa, Blue-Raman, and SWM6. This is why these projects are currently well behind schedule. There is no way to complete them in the near future as designed. Probably the only way forward right now would be build terrestrially along side the Red Sea through Saudi Arabia. In other words, bypass that part of the Red Sea adjacnet to Yemen. For example, Oman could hand off Blue-Raman traffic to Saudi Arabia which could take it across the desert and essentially bypass th...

1. Chennai/Singapore; 100G; $25K Per Month. One wavelength left. 2. LS1/Abidjan; WACS; 100G; $35K a Month. 2x 100Gs available. 3. LS1/OADC; Equiano; 100G; $21K a Wave. 5x 100Gs available. 4. SG3/TY2; ADC; 100G; $15K MRC. One wave available.

The coral sea 2 subsea fibre optic branching unit for the Solomon Islands. I believe in the beginning these units were purely passive. They divided the fibre pairs into two or more paths. But more modern versions do optical switching of wavelengths. This BU is being stored aboard an Alcatel cable ship. Optical switching allows for more bandwidth efficiency as capacity can be flexibly allocated between branches. The older systems led to stranded capacity because usage was rarely equal across fibre pairs and branches. 

Venture capitalists have a poor infrastructure investment record. Their senior management typically has no startup telecom experience complemented by naive ideas that surging Internet traffic guarantees price stability. In addition, they have little idea of the operational challenge of creating a lean, mean sales machine that includes great customer experience and network performance. A really good company requires really good people. Digital 9's liquidation of its telecom infrastructure portfolio highlights a host of key issues. The portfolio includes the ailing Aquacomms cable network which Digital 9 is shopping. I speculate EXA will buy it as part of a wise strategy to consolidate the wholesale Trans-Atlantic market into a two carrier EXA/Telxius duopoly. Aquacomms was an attempt to double down on the Atlantic and Irish Sea routes despite glaring overcapacity that caused NYC/London 10Gs to fall from $38K in 2005 to $850-$1300 today. Yes, optical technology improved dramatically ...

 ADC was officially open for business November 8th, 2024 with an inauguration ceremony this past December 18th. The eight fibre pair cable is a standard coherent optics subsea network connecting Vietnam, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. The design capacity is 180 Tbps, which makes it currently the highest capacity to serve the critical Southeast Asia Triangle of Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  Industry insides are extremely excited because there has been a persistent Southeast Asia bandwidth shortage due to the growth in the region's Internet traffic. The shortage has been compounded by chronic and long lasting outages on cables like APG and Vietnam cable branches. APG has been down twelve months out of the last 24. It is a dismal record. Many of the older cables have only a few terabits throughput representing drops in the proverbial bucket.  NEC built the system which should relieve security concerns about the involvement of Chinese carri...

Many have been wondering why the 2Africa segment from Kenya to Marseille via the Red Sea remains unfinished. It turns out that the Houthi rebels refuse to bless the project or guarantee the safety of any cable ship laying 2Africa through the Red Sea. The Houthis did permit the AAE1 repair because the cable lands in Yemen and hence the repair was in their self interest. See the AAE1 map below. But 2Africa does not land in Yemen, hence no cooperation. As we all know, a Houthi missile hit the Rubymar last year in the Red Sea, crew dropped anchor and then abandonned ship. But the ship drifted 31 kilometers dragging its anchor behind it. Seacom, AAE1, and Eassy were all damaged. This could be a big problem going forward. Lots of cables including SWM6, Blue-Raman and others are supposed to snake up the Red Sea either to Egypt or Saudi Arabia/Jordan/Israel. This is a network planning nightmare of first rank. The current capacity shortages on many global routes are likely to get a lot worse be...

Like Firmina Anjana uses the Myrtle Beach CLS (DC Blox is the owner) for its US landing and is an extremely high capacity spatial division multiplexing cable with 24 fibre pairs. Design throughput is 480 Tbps. It is also a hyperscaler cable, a Meta project. The European landing is at Santander, Spain with Telxius providing the CLS. The name Anjana is a mystery to me. I assumed it was a Spanish name, but Anjana is also an Asian Indian female name that means complete and worthy.  Notable features include ***Record holder for highest capacity Trans-Atlantic cable at a half petabit day one. Note this is design capacity. It will undoubtedly be upgraded to even higher levels down the road. How much depends on coherent optics progress. ***Uses aluminum to conduct power. This works better than copper because it is lighter weight and less expensive. By using a slightly greater diameter aluminum can maintain the same voltage draw down as copper. ***Meta is landing the cable itself in US wate...