Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Funke Opeke, the CEO and founder of MainOne, resigned after selling her firm to Equinix for $320 million. MainOne was one of the first carrier neutral data centre companies in Nigeria and its MDXI facility is almost a must-have for ISPs. I suspect MainOne got into the subsea cable business for two reasons. One would be to ensure its data centers had adequate connectivity to Europe. Secondly, it was a high margin business due to limited competition. MainOne just opened a new facility in Ghana, one of Africa's bright spots in terms of political culture and market economies. Click on https for more details https://thetechcapital.com/funke-opeke-resigns-as-ceo-of-mainone-following-320m-equinix-deal/. I guess I am too woke for the old telecom guard. Political conservatives are unable to understand women outside the traditional mother, daughter, wife, and sister roles. They feel threatened.😀

 More News About Facebook W Cable It is important to remember that the Facebook's W cable design is not finished. But reliable sources suggest it will originate at a Georgia or South Carolina CLS and first land at Nigeria. From there it will go to South Africa, probably Capetown Teracco campus. Then it sails for Kenya and up from Kenya to Oman before landing at Mumbai. Oman is becoming a telecom hub with Ooredoo hosting the 2Africa CLS. I would not be surprised if they also host W. By the way, branching units may be a better way to incorporate more countries into this cable network. Yes, my hands are not steady. I got Cs in Art in high school. 😀

Telecom Egypt is a PTT whereas Mobily is a competitive Saudi Arabian mobile operator. Few details are available. Competitive players are becoming more involved in connecting Middle Eastern countries both to reduce their own costs and create strategic alliances. Mobily is following game plan as Vodafone and Bharti Airtel. As mobile voice and data traffic becomes increasingly international, mobile providers acquire more international capacity. Typically, they buy more than they need themselves because bigger purchases have lower per bit costs. Then sell the excess capacity in the wholesale market. Most likely the cable will be unrepeatered due to the short distance between the Saudi Arabian Duba CLS on the Red Sea and its Egyptian counterpart, the new Sharm El Sheik CLS. The yellow circle is Duba. Article: https://lnkd.in/dcBJXk8Y https://www.connectingafrica.com/connectivity/telecom-egypt-mobily-subsea-cable-to-link-saudi-egypt

 The network topology was originally designed to bypass both the Red Sea and Egypt. Instead, the cable goes from Sify's Mumbai CLS to a branching unit near Bubar. It splits North to land at Barka, Oman, whereas the main trunk heads Southwest to land at Salalah, Oman. Then back to sea to Djibouti, the Internet gateway to a group of landlocked African states like Ethiopa and South Sudan. From Djibouti it heads North through the Red Sea to come ashore at Duba, Saudi Arabia. The cable goes terrestrial from this point up to a modern carrier neutral data center at Aqaba, Jordan. Then the terrestrial route crosses into Israel and eventually terminates at the Sparkle CLS near Tel Aviv. From there it traverses the Mediterranean Sea to ultimately come ashore at Marseille and Genoa. Marseille Interxion and a Milano data center campus called Stack Infrastructure are the key European subsea cable POPs. The Genoa POP is Equinix GN1.  I am a bit disappointed because early reports suggested the Re

Marseille with its 16 cables tightly squeezed into reserved sea lanes and landing facilities violates the cardinal rule of network diversity. It's highly efficient, but resiliency requires physical diversity. In general, resiliency costs money because it requires not relying solely on the big interconnection points. There is a fundamental conflict between minimizing costs and maximizing network performance. This has led consortiums and the digital titans to seek other landing points. Besides being a long distance from Marseille and on a separate power grid, Genoa offers lower latency access to Italy's eyeballs as well as Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe. It has clear advantages. Landing cables at Genoa is more challenging than Marseille because there is less deep sea and more continental shelf. The cables must be threaded between Sardinia, Corsica, and Italy. As the relief map shows, this important ship corridor is more shallow. So the cables must

Marseille was formerly a telecom backwater. It was a minor POP location. But then several things happened. The UK lost its super telecom hub status because it had become almost a single point of failure. Virtually every Atlantic cable linking the two continents landed in Cornwall, England. Secondly, Brexit meant that the UK was no longer part of Europe proper, but rather a political anomaly on its periphery. Thirdly, the Digital Titans recognized that most Asian-Europe traffic Asia was bound for the European continent. Latency could be sharply reduced by going up the Red Sea, across Egypt, and then traverse the Mediterranean to Southern European landings. Finally, traffic originating in Asia and destined for Europe was growing rapidly. So the bureaucrats of the Port Authority of Marseille built segregated landing facilities and sea lanes. Permit application process was streamlined so only one office was involved. Secure facilities were set up for power feeds. By the end of 2026, 16 cab

London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Zurich, Marseille, Madrid, Munich, Vienna, and many more are Layer 1 400G wave ready. Standard three year pricing is under 3000€ per month plus at least 1200 Euros a month in cross connect savings over buying 4x 100Gs. Many routes have been completely redone including conduit and ILAs with new ultra-low loss fibre and unique city approaches. 

ACE is a two fiber pair 20 Tbps cable that links Paris and Lisbon to 16 West African countries. For nine countries it is their only cable and there is not much cross border fibre. Ivory Coast reported an outage started October 19th. Service was restored today. Vandals cut the back haul fibre.  However, there appears to be a subsea problem as well. The Sophie Germain has left port and will fix a fault on the cable's segment 6. She will reach the probable repair site November 1st. It is probably a fault where water has reached the power conductor and increased electrical resistance, but not affected optical performance. Otherwise we would see more performance degradation reports. Note that power compensation in these cases is limited. Water will eventually disrupt power totally if not quickly repaired and cause a major outage.  hashtag hashtag

This project is building a hybrid terrestrial-subsea network for Norway. The subsea portion is designed to link Norwegian cities on the West Coast. Building terrestrially between these cities is very expensive unless existing conduit is used. So the only cost effective approach to provide a route diverse to existing telecom rights of way is to go underwater. All Viking routes are 86 fibre pairs. The terrestrial routes connect not only the country's key telecom hotels, but also many of the major hyperscaler facilities as well as all of the cable landing stations. The Far North segment is for NATO and the Norwegian military. Norway shares a border with Mother Russia.  Viking's sales policy is to avoid the high overhead associated with lit services such as wavelengths. So only dark fibre will be leased or sold as IRUs. Dark fibre providers have very low operating costs. They can be run on a skelton crew. Fibre repair is always outsource to third parties. Simple devices can be inst

  It is not enough to have Equiano capacity into Lagos. You need to reach the offnet Equinix, Rack Centre, and Medallion data centres. Transmission Co's metro Lagos network delivers them all. We offer 10G, 100G, and 400G wavelengths on an optically amplified metro fibre ring connecting the must-have carrier neutral data centres. Contact me for more info and a proposal. We can provide inexpensive wavelengths between OADC, MDXI Equinix, and Rack Centre with the two Medallion sites on-net by 1Q2025. We offer the best performance and pricing. Our founder and CEO, Mark Tinka, is a well respected network engineer who was head of Seacom engineering for over a decade. Let's do a deal! Provisioning is two weeks max.

Marseille/Singapore; 10G; AAE1; $3200. Dallas Equinix/Ashburn Equinix; $2200. Singapore/Tokyo; ADC; 100G; $15K. Mumbai/Singapore; Via Chennai landing; 100G; $22K. Lisbon/Lagos; Equiano; 10G; $7500. Lisbon/South Africa; Equiano; 100G; $25K. Milano/Palermo; 100G; 2000€. Lisbon/Madrid; 100G; 1100€. Ashburn Equinix/Paris; Dunant; $5750. Milano/Thessaloniki; 100G; $7500. 

 A few days ago I wrote that Facebook was planning a new subsea cable directly linking the US East Coast to South Africa, then up to India, onward to Australia, and finally to the US West Coast. Clearly resiliency is a big theme. It avoids Lisbon, Marseille, Egypt, the Red Sea, and Singapore. All choke points due to their telecom hub status. Note that the map below shows lots of branching units, but I don't have insider confirmation although they make perfect sense. The cable is 16 fibre pairs.  This cable may be heavily influenced by AI considerations. AI data centres require lots of space and power. The US, South Africa, India, and Australia are good candidates for AI data centres in terms of space. All of them except for South Africa have modern power grids. But South Africa is still the best place on the continent for large scale AI facilities. An AI theme makes particular sense given the cable's high latency. An AI data centre does not directly serve custom

The advent of 2Africa and Equiano cables will make the older African cables like WACS, ACE, and MainOne stranded assets in those markets where they compete head-to-head against the former. Both 2Africa and Equiano are much higher capacity systems; this means a lower cost per bit. There are big economies of scale in network equipment. But the biggest difference is that high capacity does not entail higher subsea maintenance charges. The annual fees paid to the cable ships do not depend on lit capacity. It is quite possible that Equiano pays far less than WACS due to Google's bargaining power and the fact the cable is buried deeper and avoids the dangerous subterranean canyons where a disproportionate number of African subsea faults happen. The maintenance charge is effectively insurance which should reflect the degree of risk. So Equino's cost per bit as a function of the fixed annual repair fee could be much less than for ACE, MainOne, and WACS. Equiano's design transmissio

Despite nonsense about both appointments being 'woke', Paula Cogan retired from EUNetworks after a very successful fund raising effort that raised enough cash to enable massive network building. Kathy Johnson joined Lumen in late 2022 when the company was floundering due to a high debt to revenue ratio and made the hard choices that her male predecessors could not. The stock price agrees. Johnson raised cash by selling off Lumen's South American and European assets including the South American and Atlantic cables. It is generally agreed that the buyers overpaid. I suspect these changes are just the beginning. Her talks focus on corporate culture and my impression of the wholesale service provider telecom industry is that its culture stinks. Unable to provide accurate quotes on the spot, limited product innovation, meetings from 8 AM to 10 PM, provisioning so lethargic it looks like slow motion video, and 1990 era automation. The real barrier to profitability is the people s

Several sources have whispered in my ear that META is planning a new 16 fibre pair cable that will encompass the world going from the US East Coast to the US West Coast via the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and the Pacific. The most ambitious subsea project ever undertaken. I do not know the exact routing. I know that the cable will launch from the American East Coast and will go down the West African Coast to South Africa and then head straight to Mumbai. It is not clear if Europe will be online or not. From Mumbai it will head straight to Australia and then up to the US West Coast. I speculate that there may be branching units to Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. But the basic routing is US/South Africa/India/Australia/US. What is not clear is if there will be branching units to add more countries to the cable.  This semi-secret cable reflects META's desire for network resiliency given the four month Red Sea down time that AAE-1 and other subsea cables suffered during the first half

Most Layer 1 bandwidth buyers focus their efforts on EXA's three Hibernia Atlantic cables, Aquacoms' AEC-1 and AEC-2 assets, and Marea and Dunant. As a group, those subsea networks probably account for 80% of wavelength transactions across the Pond. Two lesser well known alternatives are Amitié and Grace Hopper. Amitié means friendship in French. Not surprisingly, it connects Boston via a Lynn, Massachusetts landing at a Hibernia CLS to Bordeaux, France. This spatial division multiplexing 16 fibre pair main trunk cable is a Meta project. Meta owns 80% of the network capacity with the balance held by the minority partners of Orange, Vodafone, and Aquacoms. To be more precise, Amitié branches in the Eastern Atlantic to the UK and France. Twelve fibre pairs land at Bude, Cornwall, and sixteen pairs at the Orange La Porge CLS, a short distance from Bordeaux. Note that 16 pairs land in the US, but a total of 28 on the European side. The branching unit is using optical switching to

I n 2005 there were 7 high c apacity Trans- Atl antic subsea fibre optic networks connecting North  Americ a to Europe. Flag had two cables, Hibernia  Atl antic two as well, Level3 owned the Yellow cable, Global Crossing had  AC1, the PTTs owned TAT-14,  and  Apollo h ad two. In most cases the cables landed in either Ireland or the UK with most traffic destined for downtown London telecom hotels like the various partitions of Telehouse London (East & North at that time). London was Europe's key telecom hub. The other two important hubs were Frankfurt and  Amsterd am.  At the time Teli a Carrier was buying 10G waves 60 Hudson to Telehouse East for $38K a month. But that did not last long.  There was chronic excess capacity due to zombie subsea cables. In most industries if rates of return are depressed, firms exit the industry with their assets sold to be used in other sectors. Consequently, the industry produces less and prices rise pushing up cash flow margins. Not so in tel

EXA has emerged as the dominant player on the Atlantic routes. Its original subsea network consisted of the the highly diverse North and South Hibernia cables complemented by the much faster and younger Express cable.  North EXA cable was RFS 2001. It connects London & New York via landings highly diverse to its competitors. North lands in Canada at Halifax and at Southport, UK. In contrast, most Atlantic cables land near New York City and in Cornwall near Bude. North's diversity makes it an excellent choice for network planners focusing on resiliency. Obviously, the cable's latency is high, but that is generally the tradeoff one must accept to achieve physical diversity. I think the RTD 60 Hudson/Telehouse London is probably 76 ms. dfs South EXA cable was also RFS 2001. It lands at the same CLS as North on both sides of the Atlantic. I believe the latency is slightly higher.  Express was built much later (RFS 2015). It is designed to be the lowest latency path from LD4 Slo

The Atlantic at the 100G level ranges from $4K to $6K MRC. The cables deployed at or around the time of the New Millenium vary from $3,800 to $5K. Generally, new cables like Marea and Dunant command a premium because they directly connect Ashburn Equinix to Continental Euroipe with both Ashburn Equinix and at least two Paris Equinix facilities onünet. Both bypass Ireland and the British isles. So expect to pay in the $5K to $6K range on 2 or 3 year terms. And yes, you should pay the premium because Marea, Dunant, Anjana, and Nuveem all dramatically improve resiliency. The NYC/London cooridor is congested with most UK landings in Cornwall at Bude. Furthermore, UK surveillance of undersea cables is well known.  Any saavy buyer should be riding both NYC/London cables and also cables like Dunant and Marea that directly link Ashburn Equinix to the European continent. This physical diversity is not a luxury; it's essential. A special mention goes to EXA Express for NYC/London which is a

Eastern Light is building a hybrid subsea-terrestrial dark fibre ring connecting Sweden, Finland, the Baltics, Germany, Denmark, and Norway. This morning I interviewed their sales director to better understand this ambitious project. The fibre pair count is 3x 144 pairs or 432 in total. No lit optical circuits or wavelengths will be sold. Instead, customers will be leasing or purchasing via IRU fibre pairs that they will light using their own equipment. There are ILAs for the subsea spans located   on islands, but the short distances make them an option, not a necessity. However, some customers will undoubtedly prefer buying less and optically amplifying to juice the transmission rates. Because it is a dark fibre network, the customer base will be predominantly hyperscalers, big carriers including the incumbents (Telia's internationl network is old), university research consortiums, governments including their national militaries, NATO, and banks. In particular, hyperscalers are ex