Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

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...

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. 

Hollow core enjoys 33% lower latency than standard solid core single mode fibre. Moreover, it offers at least 50% more bandwidth because a much wider spectrum band can be used. In contrast, solid glass is hobbled by high attenuation outside the C and L bands. A final advantage is hollow core exhibits little chromatic dispersion. Single mode fibre is bedeviled by polar mode and chromatic dispersion. In each case, the speed of light through glass varies sufficiently by wavelength to blur the signal by the time it reaches the far end. The coherent optics revolution was largely about using digital signal processing to unscramble the signal or more precisely to use physics to work backwards and infer the original, pristine signal. But hollow core technology until now has been stymied by very high optical attenuation. This simply means the light fades rapidly as it passes through the hollow core. The light is absorbed rapidly by the surrounding glass border due to the absence of refraction. ...

Seacom announced today the Son of Seacom cable project. It's very ambitious with the goal of connecting Singapore to Marseille with a branch going down the East Africa Coast and up to Angola. I estimate the cable will land in 20 countries including Singapore, India, Pakistan, Oman, Dubai, Djibouti, Sudan, Egypt, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, and what appears to be Angola, but might be one of the two Congos. The press release claims it will a 48 fibre pair architecture. I am not sure what that means. A 48 fibre pair cable would make Seacom 2.0 one of the most expensive and technically challenging cables ever dropped in the water. In fact, no one has deployed a repeatered 48 subsea cable over long distances I believe the Trans-Atlantic Anjana cable holds the record at 24 fibe pairs and 480 Tbps design capacity. I strongly believe Seacom management will be forced to downsize their ambitions. A much more likely figure will 16 fibre pairs or 24 with ...

 AI Industry Implosion Is Just A Matter Of Time Too much $$$ chasing too few and highly imperfect applications. Yann LeCun is a towering figure in AI research and Facebook's Chief AI researcher. Won the most prestigious award in computer science, namely the 2018 Turning prize. Also researcher at the New York Courant Institute. 

Most West African coast cables land in Portugal. The buyer's challenge is that are few connectivity providers available to carry that traffic to the rest of Europe. Arelion and Zayo are both off-net. My guess is Arelion will light layer 1 services near the end of 2025. What providers are available do not offer a lot of physical diversity as most are using fibre on the high tension power lines.  I came across Lyntia roughly a year ago via an EUNetworks introduction. This wholesale network is the subsidiary of Naturgy, a multinational electricity and gas company. The company is a power and gas provider owning a very dense distribution network in Spain and Portugal.  Lyntia's fibre is in the gas pipeline right of way with a little bit on high tension power lines. The network enjoys unique physical diversity as its Layer 1 competitors have bought IRU's on a rival power line company. Unlike some of its competitors, Lyntia enjoys rock solid financial stability as a subsidiary of ...

A point: FR5; Z point: Any Singapore Equinix facility; 10G; Layer 1; $35,750 MRC; 3 Year. The Middle Eastern and segment is route protected.

Right now there is a swarm of buyers seeking Bifrost and Topaz capacity. A former Google subsea cable guy warned me some time ago that these projects would be a big disappointment to the wholesale community. Google is keeping much of the Topaz spectrum for itself with one major transaction with a government entity. The main providers in the market are MOX and Telstra. I believe each owns a fibre pair with Mox doing a fair amount of spectrum sales in the form of quarter fibre pair sales. To give you a sense of pricing, a 15 year 100G wave pricing between Tokyo Equinix and Seattle Westin Building is slightly over $3 million upfront with 4% O&M. Ignoring discounting, that's $27K a month! 😂 I estimate most 1 year leases will be in the upper $30K to $50K MRC range. The route is extremely sexy because it is the lowest latency stable route between Tokyo and Seattle, lands in Canada, which Canadians love, and is diverse to other Japan/US cables. Of course, the lowest latency cable is ...

Juno 100G Lease; 3 Years; $15,500 MRC; Tokyo Equinix/Coresite 2, LA.  Juno 100G IRU; 15 Years; $875K; 4% O&M; Tokyo Equinix/Coresite 2, LA. Jupiter 100G Lease; 3 Years; $18,250 MRC; Tokyo Equinix/Coresite 2, LA. Jupiter 100G IRU; 15 Years; $875K; 4% O&M; Tokyo Equinix/Coresite 2, LA. SJC2 100G Lease; 1 Year; $12K MRC; Mega-i, HK/SG3 or GS, SG. SJC2 100G Lease; 1 Year; $13K MRC; Chikuri CLS/SG3 or GS. ADC 100G Lease; 1 Year; $13K MRC; Tokyo Equinix/SG1. Remarks: 1. No China licensed carriers. 2. Customer responsible for cross connects. 3. Six to eight weeks is standard turn up.

This super high capacity half petabit cable connects Genoa, Milano, Roma, Sardinia, and Sicily. It has 24 pairs and total design capacity of 480 Tbps. ASN is the project supplier. The cable is part of a bigger project to build Italian data centers and a complementary terrestrial fibre network. Unidata is the owner; it is constructing a data center near Rome.  The Sales Pitch 1. Uniterreno is an open cable. Customers can buy fibre pairs and are responsible for most of the terrestrial infrastructure including the SLTEs. The common infrastructure includes the cable itself together with the subsea amplifiers and power feed equipment. Customers are generally responsible for backhaul fibre, terrestrial amplifiers, and their POPs where the SLTEs are housed. The ability to customize the terrestrial network is a big draw. 2. The Sicily to Northern Italy RTD is 9 milliseconds. Significantly better than traveling up Italy's boot. 3. Huge capacity means great pricing (or should). Networks en...

No sinister forces at work. Not the Chinese, Russians, rogue CIA or Star Trek Borg from the Delta Quadrant. Just a tanker carrying liquified natural gas with a Turkish crew and flying under the Flag of Panama (soon to be the 51st American state according Trump). It is headed for the Suez Canal with possibly a stop at Jeddah, which has LPG port facilities. It probably damaged EIG, Falcon, IMEWE, and SMW4 by dragging its anchor through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait below. It seems a quite plausible scenario. 

 Amazon is racking up big wins left and right for its not-yet-launched LEO service. The pitch is quite simple: you are already our cloud customer, you love us, and we offer much higher throughput than Starlink. Plus there is no Musk stench.  Recent Kuiper Wins 1. Amazon recently won a big deal with an American airline, Jet Blue.  2. NBN is Australia's government sponsored wholesale network designed to ensure universal Internet service. It is a new Kuiper customer.   3. Airbus will install Kuiper transmission gear in its planes. Amazon offers gigabit speeds on its satellite links:  about 4 times greater than Starlink. This is important for corporations, governments, and research faciltiies.  See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-07/satellite-internet-competition-nbn-amazon-starlink/105620108. 

The yellow cable at the top is Gulf2Africa. Apparently up. Below it in red is Falcon. Below Falcon is the green colored MENA Cable. Below MENA is the gray colored RAMAN cable, not yet activated. The blue cable is SWM4 and right below SWM4 is EIG.  So it looks like someone dragged anchor close to shore and cut those cables. They are right next to other so the story makes sense. Can anyone confirm Gulf2Africa is ok?