Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

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...

1. Carriers begin small scale long haul hollow core fibre deployments in the next two years. Deployments balloon by 2030. The driving force is a one third reduction in round trip latency. This makes it attractive for Internet backbones and Tier 2 ISPs. Hollow core fibre can use a much broader range of infrared spectrum leading to a doubling of bandwidth.  Microsoft has already deployed its hollow core product (Lumensity subsidiary) not only in Azure data centers, but between them. Hybrid cables containing both Lumensity hollow core and standard single mode fibre have been deployed between European Azure data centers. Route miles deployed and carrying live traffic totals 1280 kilometers. See for full details: https://lnkd.in/dKhc4ANj.  2. The Saudis have an opportunity to dethrone Egypt as the Middle East gateway to Europe, but it requires they sharply drop pricing on their long haul routes.  The Israelis can also participate if they stop the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza s...

A point: DX1, Dubai. Z point: FR5, Frankfurt. Service: Layer 1 Wavelength. Bandwidth: 10G. MRC: $17.5K. NRC: $5K. RTD: Approximately 100 ms. Routing: Dubai, Riyadh, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus, Marseille, Frankfurt. Customer responsible for cross connects.