Why The UK Has Declined As An International Subsea Cable Hub - Part 1

At the beginning of the third millennium almost all Trans-Atlantic cables directly linked the US or Canada to either Ireland or the UK. Flag North landed at Northport, New York, and Bude, UK. Hibernia North (EXA North) was a rare exception. It came ashore at Halifax and also in Southport, UK. Yellow touched ground on Long Island and at Bude. AC2 came ashore also at Brookhaven and Bude. Hibernia South (EXA South) landed in Halifax and also at Dublin. Finally, Apollo North touched ground at Brookhaven and Bude. Clearly this is inadequate physical diversity in terms of landing points and cable landing stations. It is highly cost effective because subsea cables can share common terrestrial infrastructure, but cost and resiliency are sworn enemies. There is almost always a tradeoff.

Almost all Trans-Atlantic traffic went to the 9th floor Telx facility at 60 Hudson and the 111 8th Avenue data centre in Manhattan. In London the destination was almost invariably the Telehouse North and East data centers. After 2010 data center diversity improved as Slough Equinix in the London suburbs began to overshadow the crowded London docklands data facilities. Similarly, Secaucus Equinix in New Jersey became the key telecom hub for the Northeast US.

Nonetheless, most traffic destined for Continental Europe had to flow via London to English Channel subsea cables. Just the number of network segments involved guaranteed more downtime than would be experienced if cables bypassed the UK altogether to reach Continental Europe. Outages were possible at the Bude CLS, the London back haul, the Docklands data centres, the front haul to the English coast, and the English Channel cables themselves. The OTTs realized a more reliable, less expensive, and more elegant approach would be direct cables from the US to Continental Europe. On top of that, there were profound changes on the US side as Internet peering migrated from small, space-constrained Northeast data centers in New York and Boston to the more spacious and centrally situated Ashburn Equinix campus. Moreover, the best place for peering along the East Coast its centre point, preferably in a large facility that can scale due to the abundance of open land and accommodate a huge number of peering partners. Ashburn's location reduced overall latency to US end users. It is also far from the terrorist target of New York City. 

The final dagger that dethroned the UK as a subsea cable hub was surveillance. Post Brexit, the UK Parliament enacted a draconian surveillance law that gave the British spy agencies almost unfettered access to private data. It included secret orders to disclose data without judicial approval and public disclosure penalties. Recently the British Home office issued a secret order demanding access to all Iphone cloud accounts around the world. Not just British domiciled Iphone accounts, but the whole damn planet. The Washington Post broke the story: https://lnkd.in/dbn-uC5Z. Apple simply stopped providing encryption for UK customers and issued a public notice to that effect.