Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

The American carrier Zayo has an extensive European wide area network as well as a highly ranked international Internet backbone. Its relatively new subsea Zeus cable links Amsterdam to London via a double armored 96 fibre pair system buried on average between 2 and 3 meters deep. Although Zayo's press releases nowhere states it, any 96 fibre pair cable is undoubtedly unrepeatered just like Scylla and CrossChannel because a repeatered system would probably require more power than possible. Repeatered 96 pair cables do not exist. And like Scylla, Zeus uses ultra-low loss fibre. Probably the Corning SMF28 product. The cable's current throughput is 2.6 petabits per second with the potential to do up to 4 petabits.  One reason both Scylla and Zeus are buried so deep is that the North Sea sediment layers off the  Netherland's coasts are not stable. They move carried by the North Sea's strong wind and sea currents. This necessitates deeper burial to ensure the cable does no

Besides Scylla  and Zeus , Crosslake's CrossChannel is the only other new English Channel cable built in the last 20 years. There was a 1998-2002 subsea construction boom and in wake of the subsequent capacity glut affecting the Atlantic and Europe, all further building ceased until the last 5 years. Scylla and CrossChannel are similar in many respects : unrepeatered 96 fibre pair double armoured cables owned by private operators as opposed to consortiums and both backed by infrastructure funds. The consortium model is less common in North America and Europe because there are fewer barriers to entry such as monopoly or semi-deregulated telecom markets. So including the incumbents in order to facilitate landing a subsea cable is unnecessary. It is interesting that all three cables are unrepeatered. Prior to their construction, most or all of the English Channel cables were low fibre count, repeatered networks. I suspect improvements in fibre purity and more importantly coherent opti