Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

- 2Africa is much more expensive than Equiano. The 2Africa 100G pricing is $25K and above excluding tails for Lisbon to Lagos. In contrast, Equiano 100G pricing is below $20K now. Similarly, Equiano 10G pricing gravitates around $5K versus $10K on the same route for 2Africa.  The reason for this disparity is that the 144 Tbps Equiano cable primarily serves South Africa, Portugal, and Nigeria. The 180 Tbps 2Africa network serves over 30 countries and Facebook kept 4 of the 16 pairs for itself. Note that the 2Africa map does not include the Pearls extension of 2Africa to the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, and Mumbai.   Another sign of the impending capacity crunch is the unwillingness of 2Africa consortium members to sell IRUs. An IRU is a long term capacity sale ranging from 10 years to life of system. Carriers will not sell IRUs if they expect future capacity shortages or think they are likely. Many of these carriers have transit backbones that they must keep running smoothly. T...

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. The West African 2Africa cable segment extending from South Africa to Portugal should be live late February or early March. Excellent opportunity to diversify your network while reducing overall costs. Unfortunately, not clear when the Kenya/Marseille route via the Red Sea will be ready. Many buyers are currently riding Equiano single threaded or pairing it up with older, much more expensive and outage-prone cables like WACS, MainOne or Glo-1. Between Lisbon/Lagos, Lagos/SA, and Lisbon/SA, 2Africa 100Gs should vary from the upper teens to lower twenties per month on 3 year contracts. Like Equiano, 2Africa is buried deeper than the legacy subsea networks while avoiding the danger spots like the Congo Canyon or its Ivory Coast counterpart, Le Trou Sans Fin. For countries like Ivory Coast I expect carriers to initially hold the line at $35K MRC on 3 year deals, but I expect pricing discipline will disintegrate with pricing headed into the mid-twenties.  There is no reason to ...

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, which is the Internet gateway for 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 suggeste...

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. Indeed, there is a fundamental conflict between minimizing network costs and maximizing performance. This has led consortiums and the digital titans to seek other landing points to reduce Marseille's importance. 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. The city offers clear advantages for a landing spot.  On the down side, landing cables at Genoa is more challenging than Marseille because cables must traverse more shallow waters to reach it. Cables must be threaded between Sardinia, Corsica, and Italy....

1. The last 2Africa splice should happen in December and the cable is likely to be fully live April, 2025. Not surprising given this is the most complicated submarine cable project ever undertaken with over 40 landings and many new cable landing stations. Right now only the Kenya to South Africa segment is live.  2. Blue-Raman is farther out than many Blue-Raman providers are willing to admit. Not 2nd quarter next year. But year's end for the all-important Marseille/Mumbai segment. Don't be fooled. Salesmen are Liars. 😀 Except for me, of course. 😊 3. I can sell you 5x 100Gs on any of the three Equiano segments today and three months down the road will have 25x 100Gs available on the Equiano cable. Plus I have affordable local loops from Lagos OADC to the other two key Lagos data centers. Moreover, the metro fibre is amplified which is important for ensuring acceptable 400G and 800G wave performance. Most Lagos 

 ***Well informed sources tell me that Blue-Raman is unlikely to go live before November 2025. My suspicion is that this is due to the terrestrial fibre builds across the Saudi Arabian desert as well as Jordan and Israel.  ***The 2Africa cable consortium controls its cable landing stations. So CLS operators are essentially employees. Not Masters of the Universe like in most previous African projects. 😀 In fact, the consortium financed many of the new 2Africa landing stations. And furthermore, not only are cross connect and back haul charges capped, but there are performance standards imposed on operators in terms of delivering power, space, cross connects, and anything else that affects circuit delivery or performance. Below is the 2Africa cable landing in Nigeria.