European Capacity Buyer Recommendations For Subsea Cable Customers

  • Right now EUNetworks is clearly the best carrier for Layer 1 Western European network capacity. I work on a daily basis with them. The carrier offers the best combination of performance, price, and commercial flexibility. They are my default go-to provider. Note they offer wavelengths, spectrum, and metro dark fibre among other services. For ISPs they offer lower latency general bandwidth routes than their competitors. This is a big deal for African and Asian ISPs who already endure high latency to the distances between Europe and these other continents. Their new Digital Super Highways are quite attractive. These massive upgrades of the standard Western Europe routes give them a distinct edge over the 2000 era networks of their competitors.

  • Arelion is the best transit provider, but Hurricane Electric should be a part of the upstream mix as well. RETN also has good transit. All three are in the top 15 ASN ranking which is a measure of the number of BGP links to other ISPs. These direct links are to customers or peering partners. 

  • Arelion is the best choice for Northern and Eastern Europe private line. They have lots of subsea cable ownership in the Baltic Sea and are deploying fibre from Warsaw up to my new home, Estonia. But they didn't do it for me. I must pay 5000€ to get a fibre optic pair to my country home outside Tallinn. 😃

  • Big carrier procurement teams rely too much on the usual suspects. For example, there are many utility companies (gas, power, water ways, and railroads) that have wholesale carrier divisions using their unique rights of way. Hungry for business and financially sound due to the parent company's ownership. Some of these highly diverse networks are depicted below. They offer in many cases much more dense footprints than the usual suspects. 

Map of Fibre Optic Nework in France




Map of European Network Centered in Italy


Map of the New Fibre Optic Baltic Region Highway


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