Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

I predicted a couple months ago that EXA was consolidating the Atlantic and would purchase Aqua Comms, which has been struggling, and whose estimated value was written down by its former owner, an infrastructure fund. The telecom street tells me the purchase was a mere $54 million for all of Aqua Comms' assets. That $54 million includes the the four fibre pair AEC1, two fibre pairs on AEC2, which is a consortium project, and two Irish Sea cables. That's not very good. In fact, it is terrible. A fraction of construction costs. It's a great contrarian EXA move because EXA can absorb the company's assets, but fire 99% of the employees. A lot of venture capitalists are bullish on telecom infrastructure without really understanding the challenges (they should hire me for a lot of money to educate them). 😃 So what went wrong? Poor operational performance probably played a role, but probably focusing on Ireland was a mistake. The big potential clients for Ireland are Google, ...

Amazon Ireland has applied for a maritime usage license to land a planned cable connecting Ireland to the United States. It is considering landing the cable near Castlefreke on Ireland's Southeast Coast in County Cork along a stretch of beach called the Strand. Amazon has made no public announcement so far. Here is the filed application: https://lnkd.in/dUF__j8V. I discovered this when I came across a local Irish newspaper that mentioned that Amazon was looking at a nearby beach for a cable landing. I then did a Google search and found the filing. All these filings are posted online and they are 'leading indicators' as economists would say of what is going to happen.  No Trans-Atlantic subsea cables currently land on Ireland's South Coast other than EXA's Express and that is part of the reason that Amazon finds it so appealing. Such a cable would be physically diverse at least on the terrestrial side to the Irish Sea and older Atlantic cables like Hibernia North and...

Satellite competes with terrestrial broadband because they are both access technologies. But all satellite networks generate traffic for the terrestrial backbones including the subsea cables. After all, there is little content stored in space! 😃 Hence satellite Internet providers must access data centers just like every other technology in the telecom world. Inter-satellite free space laser communication will bypass the terrestrial backbones to an extent, but this is really just a drop in the bucket. It works mostly for low bandwidth applications like email and instant messaging.  The graph shows the number of objects launched into low earth orbit from 1960 onward. This includes manned space craft, satellites, and unmanned spacecraft. Note that the dominant factor is SpaceX putting Starlink LEO satellites into orbit. As of January 2025, Starlink has 6,932 in space. In addition, Amazon Kuiper is deploying 3,236 LEO birds with the bulk of the fleet flying into orbit in 2025 and 2026...

This Newsweek article insinuates that China developed cable cutting technology detailed in a patent application in order to sabotage subsea cables. It is not stated explicitly. But that is clearly the conclusion the author wants the reader to reach. Yet the underlying logic has more holes than my mother's mole infested lawn. And that's a lot of holes. 😃  1. In order to lift a damaged fibre optic cable onto a ship for repair, it must be severed in most cases because there is usually not enough slack to hoist intact aboard a ship. Secondly, an intact cable weighs a lot and is more difficult to handle than pulling up one end of a severed cable. Hence cutting intact, but damaged cables prior to repair is protocol. So cable cutting technology is not per se evidence of intent to sabotage. 2. According to the patent application mainland China faced a problem with illegal cable laying in its territorial waters This is not as strange as it sounds. For example, the Thai police discove...

Satellite competes with terrestrial broadband because they are both access technologies. But all satellite networks generate traffic for the terrestrial backbones including the subsea cables. After all, there is a little content stored in space! 😃 Hence satellite Internet providers must use data centers just like every other technology in the telecom world. Inter-satellite free space laser communication will bypass in some cases to a limited extent the terrestrial backbones, but this is really just a drop in the bucket. It works mostly for low bandwidth applications like email and instant messaging. The graph shows the number of objects launched into low earth orbit from 1960 onward. This includes manned space craft, satellites, and unmanned spacecraft. Note that the dominant factor is SpaceX putting Starlink LEO satellites into orbit. In addition, Amazon Kuiper is deploying slightly over 3,000 LEO birds with the bulk of the fleet flying into orbit in 2025 and 2026. Chin...

Long haul fibre optic bandwidth ranges from a few terabits per second into the low thirties with the equipment and operating expense sharply rising as transmission rates go up. Repeatered subsea cables generally lie in the 12 to 25 Tbps window with most spatial division multiplexing deployments pushing 12 to 20 Tbps whereas the traditional 6 to 8 pair coherent optics deployments transmit at least 20 Tbps or higher per strand.  The key factor determining the optical transmission rate is attenuation, which refers to the fact that a photon or wavelength's intensity or energy diminishes as it travels through fibre optic glass or any other medium. Light is scattered, reflected backwards or absorbed. Other variables that affect transmission rates include the number of distinct wavelength bands (dense wave division multiplexing) that can serve as distinct optical channels in a given spectrum range (usually the C band). The more channels, the higher the transmission rate. Chromatic dispers...

Might close my first 100G into India today. 🙂 I recommend focusing for the next six months on the India/Singapore roiute as Red Sea construction of IEX, 2Africa, and SWM6 is on hold due to the possibility of missile strikes. In contrast, IAX and Mist do not face these issues. I understand that both Marseille and Singapore are essential peering points, but Marseille/Mumbai is likely to be hell for the foreseeable future. Put your incremental effort where it earns the greatest incremental return. Today is it is Mumbai or Chennai to Singapore. I am always available to provide your advice and guidance on your hunt for a Great Deal. 😃 

The chart tells us that Ireland despite its low tax rates is quite costly with the highest power rates in the EU. It is often joked that a data centre is a power reseller and there's a lot of truth in that statement. For example, Equinix reports that power and cooling are 80% of its infrastructure operating expense. In general, a data centre's overall operating expense can be as much as 50% electricity. From what I can tell Irish data centre demand for electricity has grown much faster than the country's power capacity. Data centres consume 21% of Ireland's electricity versus 18% for households. This is an astonishing figure.  High German rates reflect the failed Energiewende. The system costs of wind and solar are extremely high in Germany and both sources are heavily subsidized via guaranteed tariffs because the load factors (annual capacity utilization rates) are very low. For example, a German solar farm only operates at 10% of capacity on an annual basis whereas Am...

Bad news and also mildly bad news. AAE1 is down due to a fault in the Red Sea located between the Zafrana, Egypt and Saudi branching units. The outage began December 31st. Pearls 2Africa (depicted in the map) will go live near year's end, but it has only one fibre pair down the African East Coast from Oman to Kenya. China Mobile owns it.  The Big Picture is that the subsea cable world is facing a tough year. Right now Peace is the only high capacity cable live connecting Marseille to Singapore via the Red Sea. AAE1 is down. 2Africa, SWM6, Blue-Raman, and probably IEX cannot be completed due to the threat of Red Sea missile strikes. We can only hope that diplomacy results in safe passage for the cable ships. Otherwise persistent capacity shortages will only grow worse. I do expect AAE1 to be repaired within eight weeks as a cable ship can bypass Yemen via the Suez cable. But beware most cable ships are deploying new cables like Blue and Medusa. My guess is that the Indian owned cabl...

As you know, the Rubymar dragged its anchor for 31 kilometers after its crew abandoned it last spring. In so doing it severed the AAE1, Seacom/TGN, and Eassy cables. After several months stalemate, the Houthi rebels gave the consortiums permission to repair them as long as it was done in a low key fashion. The fact that AAE1 lands in Yemen gave the Houthis political cover with their supporters. But the reality is that since then the Houthis have refused to agree to refrain from targeting cable ships laying new systems like 2Africa, Blue-Raman, and SWM6. This is why these projects are currently well behind schedule. There is no way to complete them in the near future as designed. Probably the only way forward right now would be build terrestrially along side the Red Sea through Saudi Arabia. In other words, bypass that part of the Red Sea adjacnet to Yemen. For example, Oman could hand off Blue-Raman traffic to Saudi Arabia which could take it across the desert and essentially bypass th...

1. Chennai/Singapore; 100G; $25K Per Month. One wavelength left. 2. LS1/Abidjan; WACS; 100G; $35K a Month. 2x 100Gs available. 3. LS1/OADC; Equiano; 100G; $21K a Wave. 5x 100Gs available. 4. SG3/TY2; ADC; 100G; $15K MRC. One wave available.

The coral sea 2 subsea fibre optic branching unit for the Solomon Islands. I believe in the beginning these units were purely passive. They divided the fibre pairs into two or more paths. But more modern versions do optical switching of wavelengths. This BU is being stored aboard an Alcatel cable ship. Optical switching allows for more bandwidth efficiency as capacity can be flexibly allocated between branches. The older systems led to stranded capacity because usage was rarely equal across fibre pairs and branches. 

Venture capitalists have a poor infrastructure investment record. Their senior management typically has no startup telecom experience complemented by naive ideas that surging Internet traffic guarantees price stability. In addition, they have little idea of the operational challenge of creating a lean, mean sales machine that includes great customer experience and network performance. A really good company requires really good people. Digital 9's liquidation of its telecom infrastructure portfolio highlights a host of key issues. The portfolio includes the ailing Aquacomms cable network which Digital 9 is shopping. I speculate EXA will buy it as part of a wise strategy to consolidate the wholesale Trans-Atlantic market into a two carrier EXA/Telxius duopoly. Aquacomms was an attempt to double down on the Atlantic and Irish Sea routes despite glaring overcapacity that caused NYC/London 10Gs to fall from $38K in 2005 to $850-$1300 today. Yes, optical technology improved dramatically ...

 ADC was officially open for business November 8th, 2024 with an inauguration ceremony this past December 18th. The eight fibre pair cable is a standard coherent optics subsea network connecting Vietnam, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. The design capacity is 180 Tbps, which makes it currently the highest capacity to serve the critical Southeast Asia Triangle of Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  Industry insides are extremely excited because there has been a persistent Southeast Asia bandwidth shortage due to the growth in the region's Internet traffic. The shortage has been compounded by chronic and long lasting outages on cables like APG and Vietnam cable branches. APG has been down twelve months out of the last 24. It is a dismal record. Many of the older cables have only a few terabits throughput representing drops in the proverbial bucket.  NEC built the system which should relieve security concerns about the involvement of Chinese carri...

Many have been wondering why the 2Africa segment from Kenya to Marseille via the Red Sea remains unfinished. It turns out that the Houthi rebels refuse to bless the project or guarantee the safety of any cable ship laying 2Africa through the Red Sea. The Houthis did permit the AAE1 repair because the cable lands in Yemen and hence the repair was in their self interest. See the AAE1 map below. But 2Africa does not land in Yemen, hence no cooperation. As we all know, a Houthi missile hit the Rubymar last year in the Red Sea, crew dropped anchor and then abandonned ship. But the ship drifted 31 kilometers dragging its anchor behind it. Seacom, AAE1, and Eassy were all damaged. This could be a big problem going forward. Lots of cables including SWM6, Blue-Raman and others are supposed to snake up the Red Sea either to Egypt or Saudi Arabia/Jordan/Israel. This is a network planning nightmare of first rank. The current capacity shortages on many global routes are likely to get a lot worse be...

Like Firmina Anjana uses the Myrtle Beach CLS (DC Blox is the owner) for its US landing and is an extremely high capacity spatial division multiplexing cable with 24 fibre pairs. Design throughput is 480 Tbps. It is also a hyperscaler cable, a Meta project. The European landing is at Santander, Spain with Telxius providing the CLS. The name Anjana is a mystery to me. I assumed it was a Spanish name, but Anjana is also an Asian Indian female name that means complete and worthy.  Notable features include ***Record holder for highest capacity Trans-Atlantic cable at a half petabit day one. Note this is design capacity. It will undoubtedly be upgraded to even higher levels down the road. How much depends on coherent optics progress. ***Uses aluminum to conduct power. This works better than copper because it is lighter weight and less expensive. By using a slightly greater diameter aluminum can maintain the same voltage draw down as copper. ***Meta is landing the cable itself in US wate...

 Firmina is a spatial division multiplexing 16 fibre pair cable with initial design capacity of 320 Tbps. It is named after a Brazilian abolitionist, Maria Firmina dos Reis, who was Brazil's first novelist. Google is the owner. Telxius has acquired a fibre pair on the system as part of a complex deal that involves providing landing and back haul in Brazil. Right now Google is selling fibre pair and spectrum capacity to recoup its capex. Cirion Technologies has also purchased a pair. Stonepeak Investments, an  infrastructure investor, purchased Lumen's South American assets which operate today as Cirion. Firmina is substantially complete, but no RFS announcement so far.  Distinguishing Features: 1. It is possible to power the entire cable from either the US or Brazilian landing stations in case the other CLS experiences a black out.  2. Firmina is the third South American hyperscaler subsea cable. Google is the owner of all three.  3. Firmina is the first spatial...

Semiconductor lasers are one of the three building blocks of our modern IT world along with fibre optic cable and the Ethernet protocol. Subsea cables use semiconductor lasers to emit light, fibre optic cable to carry and guide it, and the dominant wrapping for optical wavelengths is an Ethernet format. Finally, the IP/TCP protocols enable different networking technologies to operate together as one network.  Einstein conjectured in 1917 that electrons could be manipulated or stimulated to emit wavelengths at a specific frequency. Later Charles Townes at Bell Labs proposed that light wave intensity could be magnified by passing it through a gas filled cavity. Done in the right way the light would trigger the gas to amplify the light without changing frequency or phase before leaving the chamber. In 1959 at Columbia University he created the immediate predecessor of the semiconductor laser, a maser (microwave amplification by stimulated emission), which used microwaves as both input...

In a class of 23 students the probability of at least two having the same birthday is 51%. In a class of 30 students the likelihood rises to 70%. I was introduced to this counterintuitive result in my first graduate school probability course. There were no more than 15 students in the class. Yet  I and another classmate is that course shared a common birthday of March 5, 1962. I will give you the logic behind this result at the end of the post.  This probability calculation is a clear warning human intuition is not likely to be a good guide to whether an event is natural or man-made or a conspiracy. Most people will assume that the chance of a two or more students with the same birthday is 10% to 15%. In case of telecommunications we have at least 450 subsea fibre optic cables in service today. This means that clusters of cable outages like we see now in the Baltic Sea and earlier this year in the Red Sea and off Abidjan are virtually guaranteed to happen due to pure chance al...

ZBLAN is the acronym for a flouride-based optical fibre that uses a combination of zirconium, lathanum, barium, sodium, and flouride that has a theoretical optical loss of only .001 dB loss per kilometer in the infrared frequencies. Good silicon-based fibre generally lies in the .15 to .20 range. Obviously, if perfected, this would constitute a major fibre optic revolution. The theoretical dB loss of 2000 kilometers of ZBLAN fibre, a French invention, would be equivalent to ten kilometers of standard silica fibre. Optical amplifiers would become obsolete for terrestrial networks and many subsea spans. The challenge is that earth's gravity leads to crystals forming when the glass is drawn and allowed to cool. Unlike standard fibre optic glass which is SiO2, silicon dioxide, ZBLAN is a complex mixture of elements with different molecular weights. Convection during the drawing process results in these elements separating into crystals. The glass also becomes extremely brittle as a res...