Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Author: Dmitry Kovsh. Subcom employee. Presentation Available Upon Request. In his presentation Dmitry focused on designing wet plant for open cable systems. Wet plant is everything in the water up to the beach manhole. The main components are the fibre optic cable and optical amplifiers. I define an open cable system as one where capacity owners manage individually their capacity. This business model involves capacity allocation by fibre pair or a percentage of a fibre pair's spectrum. Big capacity owners own one or more fibre pairs. Smaller players own spectrum called either a quarter fibre pair or half fibre pair. As the name suggests, a quarter fibre pair means the owner has exclusive right to use 25% of the fibre pair's usable spectrum. Similarly for a half fibre pair. Spectrum ownership means the cable delivers usable spectrum on a fibre pair defined by upper and lower frequency limits. The spectrum lying in the frequency range belongs to the owner for the te...

The eight fibre pair ADC system went live in November of last year. Its design capacity is slightly above 160 Tbps. Consortium members and large capacity owners include China Telecom, China Unicom, PLDT (the Philippine incumbent), Singtel, Softbank, TATA, and Vietel. TATA owns a fibre pair marketed under its own brand, TGN-IA2. NEC built the Asia Direct Cable. ADC 100G pricing for the Singapore to Tokyo route varies from $13.5K to $18.5K MRC on three year contracts. If you wish to avoid Chinese carriers, yet enjoy competitive pricing, TATA is a good choice. By a Chinese carrier I mean a network licensed to operate in mainland China and hence subject to its national security laws. These laws dictate that Chinese operators must cooperate with Chinese national security agencies. That's a big problem. In contrast, as just one example, Apple refused to cooperate with the FBI on unlocking a phone in an investigation. So there is a clear difference between China and the Wes...

The 24 fibre pair repeatered cable links Genoa, Rome, Sardinia, and Sicily. It is very high capacity. Each fibre pair can transmit slightly in excess of 26 terabits per second for a grand total of over 624 Tbps. This is likely the highest transmission rate of any repeatered subsea cable to date. Uniterreno is constructing a Rome data center to which the cable will be connected. Unidata is the name of the data center division.  The cable illustrates a number of subsea communication trends. The 24 fibre pair count has become the de facto standard. When I worked at Hibernia Atlantic between 2005 and 2011, cables never exceeded 8 pairs. That was the technical and economic ceiling. In contrast, Facebook's Waterworth, Uniterreno, Anjana, Candle, and Medusa are all 24 pair systems. So half petabit repeatered cables are the new normal. Uniterreno also illustrates a recent trend to build very high subsea capacity cables that serve a single nation. High capacity single nation cables are quit...

META has started selecting landing sites. As the map below shows, the subsea cable's routing is unique, a record breaking 50,000 kilometers in length, and it will form a ring around the world. A ring allows Facebook to reroute traffic in the opposite direction if there is a fault. Waterworth is a 24 fibre pair system. That puts at the top of the fiber pair count for spatial division multiplexing systems. So figure a design transmission rate of a half petabit per second.  Although crazy news outlets have reported it will cost $10 billion, that figure is absurd. The project can easily be done for $2 billion or less even with extensive terrestrial trenching to create new and unique fibre routes. Will the project use new technologies like multicore fibre or multiband spectrum? Doubtful. The price tag dictates the META subsea cable design team will use standard proven technology. No one wants to tell their boss they just wasted $1.5 billion dollars. It is not good for your career. 😃 Wa...

Option 1: London/South Africa/Singapore/Tokyo; 10G Wave; MRC: $21,840; 3 Year Deal; Cables include all-star lineup of Equiano, EASSY, AAE-1, & ADC. Option 2: London/Egypt/Saudi Arabia/Singapore/Tokyo; 10G Wave; MRC: $18,540; 3 Year Deal; Cables include all-star lineup of EUNetworks, Hawk, Ameer2, BBG, SJC.

Any so-called security expert should be aware that anchor dragging is a leading cause of subsea cable damage. There is no presumption of intent or sabotage. Anchors are light relative to large ships. So a ship can drag its anchor across the ocean without realizing it. Proper anchor storage requires three steps and poorly trained crews may skip one or two of these leading to the anchor falling back into the water. Attached is the ICPC article on anchor dragging: https://lnkd.in/dGzcSZst

Eastern Light had a very ambitious plan to build a hybrid subsea/terrestrial Nordic ring that included subsea cables linking Denmark to Sweden, Sweden to Finland, and Finland to Estonia. From Estonia it would create brand new fibre paths in the rights of way of the high speed Baltic Rail line all the way down the Baltic States to Poland and Germany.  The plan was both bold and expensive because the company approach was 'purist': completely new and highly diverse fibre builds both on land and at sea. My own cost estimate was a half billion Euros, which is significantly higher than monster cables like Anjana or Firmina.  Unfortunately, a creditor ended up seizing the company's assets. The creditor was a Swedish firm specializing in bridge loans for startups looking for equity financing. Generally, telecom infrastructure startups must rely on equity financing where the investors get shares (usually a big percentage and often a controlling interest) in exchange for cash. Banks ...

The recently announced Candle subsea cable is remarkably similar to the almost finished Apricot system. Both serve Southeast Asia. Although Candle does traverse the South China Sea unlike Apricot, it does remains outside of Chinese claimed waters. In each case the design reflects fear of China. But whereas Apricot is a 12 fibre system, Candle will have 24 fibre pairs with a design capacity of a half petabit per second. Candle will be the highest capacity system to ever serve Southeast Asia. This project is very challenging because it must hug the shallow Indonesian coast to avoid being subject to Chinese permitting authority and harassment. In such shallow waters deep burial is a must to avoid frequent outages due to shipping and fishing. Burial is expensive and time consuming.  Candle reflects the new reality. Avoiding Chinese landings is a top priority for security reasons because Chinese cable ownership means shared network control. Moreover, many projects like SJC2 were held up...

Anjana is a new Facebook Trans-Atlantic cable whose 24 fibre pairs collectively can push 480 Tbps. It is a badass cable. The equivalent of SpaceX' Super Heavy Launcher without the explosions. 🙂 The cable lands at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Santander, Spain. Interconnection points include Atlanta, Ashburn Equinix, Madrid, and Paris. A 100G from either Atlanta or Ashburn Equinix POP to Madrid, Marseille or Paris is $6,800 MRC on a three year contact with no install charges. Anjana's Key Strengths: 1. Physical diversity: It has the most Southern landing for a US Trans-Atlantic cable. Hundreds of miles South of the Dunant and Marea cable landing station at Virginia Beach. 2. High capacity mean attractive pricing. 3. META cable means high uptime. Note the cable path lies in relatively deep ocean water (symbolized by dark blue) for most of its journey. This sharply reduces the chance of boats damaging the cable. In contrast, the French coast and UK waters are shallow, defined...