Subsea Capacity Purchasing Challenges: China, Peace, AAE1, SWM6.

The conflict between China and the West is exacerbating bandwidth shortages on key routes like Marseille to Singapore. AAE1 is maxed out just like SWM5. Both will be upgraded this year, but I believe all the incremental capacity will be snatched up even before upgrades are finished and the capacity delivered to customers. Furthermore, China Unicom is the lead AAE1 consortium member with China Mobile also selling capacity on the system. Avoiding carriers incorporated in China makes intercontinental capacity shopping is an excruciating exercise. I've been seeking Express AAE1 100G for almost a year for clients for whom China is a red line. Bandwidth sourcing has become a marathon. 😄

In light of this, I recommend buyers consider Peace despite the fact that it is a Chinese financed project. Encryption does work. It will not protect the IP overhead, which include the IP addresses, but the data payload itself will remain safe. Moreover, there are Peace providers such as PCCW or TELIN that are incorporated outside China and use Western network gear. For standard traffic China Unicom and China Mobile are acceptable. For governments and Western financial firms, you should probably stick to PCCW or TELIN.

Peace's latency is pretty low with Marseille to Singapore clocking 137 ms RTD. Slightly higher than AAE1 Express (135) , but sharply lower than the standard AAE1 latency. Moreover, AAE1 Express is a rare dish. There is only one Express AAE1 fibre pair, which explains why getting Express capacity is a Herculean challenge. AAE1 itself has only 5 fibre pairs. In contrast, I believe Peace has 12 fibre pairs with a design capacity of 16 Tbps. But PCCW has achieved 25 Tbps using Infinera so potential capacity is far greater. Hence Peace capacity is plentiful relative to SWM5 and AAE1 with pricing that reflects the abundant bandwidth. In the case of AAE1, It is almost impossible to get 100G waves connecting Europe to Asia for under $24K MRC on two or three year terms.. That is really the bottom. In contrast, Peace is a lot cheaper. Contact me for more insight.

Peace is a useful addition to your network portfolio. You can use it as a protect path while AAE1 serves as the primary route. Obviously diversity is limited for cables traversing the Red Sea. But Peace will give you commercial and network diversity as well as lowering your cost per bit. Down the road SWM6 will provide relief to Chinese carrier adverse buyers. It will bring over a 120 Tbps to the market with consortium members including politically acceptable ones like Singtel, Orange, Bharti, Telekom Malaysia and TELIN. There's a rumor, yet unconfirmed, that SWM6 will dethrone AAE1 with a shorter Marseille/Singapore path.