Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

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?

Three industry insiders have confirmed the 'epicenter' of the outages is in Yemen coastal waters at a depth of only one 100 meters. This strongly suggests fishing or more likely an anchor is responsible. Multiple sources have told me that neither Egyptian or Saudi Internet services has been degraded, but the Persian Gulf has been hit hard as well as Pakistan. This is consistent with the epicenter being off Yemen. It is also consistent with the cables reported down below. Four Cables Definitely Down: 1. EIG. 2. SWM4. 3. IMEWE. 4. Falcon Lower left map is SMW4. Center is EIG. Far right is IMEWE. Total capacity of these four cables is approximately 44 Tbps. Pakistan is heavily dependent on SWM4, EIG, and IMEWE. Scattered reports initially suggest AAE1 may also be down. But it is not.

Microsoft has warned Azure customers of degradation in Internet performance due to "multiple outages in the Red Sea". Both IMEWE and SWM4 appear to be down near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A subsea cable customer has told me that EIG, AAE1, and Falcon are also down or at the bare minimum damaged. Internet latency has risen in the UAE and Pakistan. Please do not speculate about saborage. It is irresponsible as Ockham's Razor applies in this situation. Ockham was a Medieval European philosopher who argued that the simplest explanation that accounts for the fact is the most plausible. It has become a bedrock principle of science. Conspiracy theoriest which include a lot of so-called national security experts routinely violate the principle in their quest for $500 an hour consulting gigs. Multiple simultaneous outages suggest a common cause such as anchor dragging As you can see, Jeddah is effectively a single point of failure for subsea networks. Cables landing at Jeddah include A...

For decades optical power loss of the best performing solid core fibre has hovered around .14dB per kilometer. So it comes as a surprise and a shock that the Microsoft owned hollow core fibre optic company, Lumensity, has designed a hollow core that beats all solid core glass in minimizing optical loss. The new hollow core design was tested using a 15 kilometer spool and the result was .091 dB loss at the standard long haul 1550 nanometer wavelength. Even more impressive was the fact that the optical loss remains under .1 from 1481 nanometers wavelength to 1625 nm. This range represents about 18 Terahertz of raw spectrum. But even that is not the end of the story. Light intensity loss remains under .2 dB all the way from 1250 nm to 1750 nm. In other words, it encompasses the O, E, S, C, L, and U bands. In contrast, attenuation varies with frequency for solid core silica fibre with a global minimum at 1550 nm. Loss is simply too high in the O, E, S, and U bands. This limits usable spect...

Hollow core fibre has been around a long time. Early versions had really high optical loss of 1 db/km, but speeds close to what light travels in a vacuum (299,792, kilometers per second) versus approximately 200,000 kilometers per second in solid core fibre. The high optical loss limited deployment to very short links deployed for low latency trading. Firms like Jump trading have installed hollow core fibre from their microwave towers into financial exchange data centers like the CME facility in Aurora, Illinois. EUNetworks has deployed it in the London metro to connect financial exchange trading points. In hollow core the light tends to quickly scatter and bounce around so optical intensity fades very quickly. In solid core scattering is far less so the transmission rates are much greater at the price of a big latency penalty. The other drawback is manufacturing and cost. Solid core draws molten glass and allows gravity to shape into a strand. We can't do that with hollow core. As...