Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

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