Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

A consortium consisting of TATA Communications, Lightstorm, Microsoft, and Singtel just announced a new 16 fibre pair subsea network tailored to serve the AI data center markets in Hyderabad, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. It includes two Indian landings, one in Southern Chennai and another at Machilipatnum, the latter being the shortest path to Hyderabad. Both Hyderabad and Lumpur host large numbers of data centers equipped with GPUs for rent to estimate AI large language models. Conversely, Singapore is a distribution point for estimated AI models. What is sometimes called AI inference. Both space and power in the city state are too limited and expensive for AI model estimation. Besides the Singapore and Indian landings, there will likely be a cable branch landing in the Malaysian province of Selangor, chosen because it is the shortest way to reach Kuala Lumpur. Public information on the new system is sparse, but it is also likely that cable will include be extended to Hyderabad and Ch...

Google announced today a $15 billion dollar infrastructure investment in India that includes a new cable landing station in Visakhapatnam (Vizag), a Mumbai to Perth subsea link, a cable connecting Vizag to Singapore via a Malaysian landing (like Bay of Bengal Gateway), a subsea network between Chennai and Vizag, and a major cable from Vizag to Capetown. Although hyperscalers are frequent targets of criticism, one cannot say they lack ambition. 😀 Google's connectivity investments aim to create seamless, high capacity cables connecting India to the US using new and physically diverse routes. 1. First cable from India's West Coast to Australia. 2. First Indian  cable to South Africa. 3. Creation of a third Indian subsea hub in Vizag to improve cable landing diversity. 4. A cable link between India's two East Coast subsea and telecom hubs. 5. India's second cable to reach Singapore via Malaysian overland routes. Remarks: 1. I think Sify is like to be the cable landing oper...

The IAX cable links Chennai and Mumbai to Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Jio Reliance and China Mobile are the primary consortium members but press releases suggest there is a silent digital giant partner as well. An educated guess would be Google, Microsoft or Facebook. Information is scarce on the system. It will likely be 16 pairs like its IEX counterpart. This suggests that design capacity will easily exceed 200 Tbps. India desperately more bandwidth, but given Jio's leading role it is not clear it will lower Layer 1 pricing. On the flip side, China Mobile would be unlikely to participate in a project unless it could provide end-to-end connectivity to its customers. So I believe modest optimism is the correct frame of mind.