Microsoft's Second Irish Sea Cable: Tuskar

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 and Google operate like telecommunication carriers who rely heavily on dense wave division multiplexing to put as many optical circuits as possible on a fibre pair. The DWDM kit's pricing makes it very difficult to be profitable. Instead, the Digital Giants run  flatter networks with far fewer waves per fibre pair where they can. This allows them to use white boxes and much less expensive low density wave division products. The rumor for years has been Google runs a flat network on land and on unrepeatered cables. I think their preference is to simply plug a fibre pair into a layer three router. I would not surprised if coarse wave division multiplexing has been the preferred plat du jour (meal of the day). So these OTTs substitute fibre for expensive optical equipment and that explains why fibre rich unrepeatered cable ownership is so appealing to these players. 

The two maps below I screenshot off the application for the maritime usage license. It indicates either that two routes are being considered for TUSKAR or that it will have a branch. 

Map of Microsoft's Planned Tuskar Subsea Cable

Map of the Maritime Survey Paths for Microsoft's Planned Fibre Optic Tuskar Cable


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