Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

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...

 Firmina is a spatial division multiplexing 16 fibre pair cable with initial design capacity of 320 Tbps. It is named after a Brazilian abolitionist, Maria Firmina dos Reis, who was Brazil's first novelist. Google is the owner. Telxius has acquired a fibre pair on the system as part of a complex deal that involves providing landing and back haul in Brazil. Right now Google is selling fibre pair and spectrum capacity to recoup its capex. Cirion Technologies has also purchased a pair. Stonepeak Investments, an  infrastructure investor, purchased Lumen's South American assets which operate today as Cirion. Firmina is substantially complete, but no RFS announcement so far.  Distinguishing Features: 1. It is possible to power the entire cable from either the US or Brazilian landing stations in case the other CLS experiences a black out.  2. Firmina is the third South American hyperscaler subsea cable. Google is the owner of all three.  3. Firmina is the first spatial...

The planned Bulikala cable connects Google's modular prefabricated Guam CLS to Fiji. It is a part of a grand plan to dramatically increase Pacific subsea throughput and resiliency via a web of island hopping fibre optic cables. These small islands offer diverse network routing. They also offer power, which is the gating factor for throughput over long distances. Bulikala deployment is well underway with a branch recently landing on Tuvalu island, which has only satellite connectivity. The branch is a joint project of Google and the island's PTT. Most Pacific islands are poor due to limited resources, geographic isolation, and poor digital connectivity. They are also threatened by rising water due to global warming. Even the Hawaii island chain is relatively poor with Honolulu being surprisingly run down.  There is a mighty power play at work here. The US government provides aid to these islands sprinkled across the Pacific Ocean for their on-land digital infrastructure while Go...

Both cables has been repaired, namely the one connecting Lithuania to Sweden and the C-Lion system as well. The emerging consensus within the European subsea cable community is that the German, Finnish, and Estonian authorities are wrong in claiming sabotage. Anchor dragging is a very crude form of sabotage and in this case the Chinese ship Li Peng crossed 13 cables and only damaged two. Secondly, a key requirement of sabotage is a safe get away. A heavy, slow cargo ship is not a good getaway car. Furthermore, the European press got it wrong when it claimed the ship captain is Russian. It is a Chinese ship with a Chinese captain. I have written an article explaining why the sabotage accusations are so flimsy in my opinion: https://subseacables.blogspot.com/2024/11/american-officials-say-no-sabotage-in.html. The ship dragged its anchor probably to steady itself in bad weather and turned off the transponder because the captain knew what it was doing was irresponsible. I suspect the l...

C-Lion Cable Down In Baltic Sea C-Lion is an 8 fibre pair high capacity linear cable that went live in 2016. Transmission rate is 144 Tbps. The cable connects Helsinki data centers to Frankfurt via a cable traversing the Baltic Sea. C-Lion lands at Rostock, Germany, and at Helsinki. The Finnish government financed, owns, and operates the subsea network in the national interest. One goal of the project was to reduce network dependence on third country transit via Sweden or the Baltics. Another was to provide enough capacity to grow the Finnish data center market.  Finland offers many advantages for large data centers. Its cool climate dramatically lowers cooling costs as well as extending server life spans. There is also attractively priced, reliable, and abundant power in the form of hydro, nuclear, and wind. I think the large Google data center in Hamina, Finland opened the government's eyes to the economic potential that subsea capacity unlocks. Indeed, Google announced just a fe...

Google's Firmina cable is a 16 fibre pair spatial division multiplexing cable that connects its Myrtle Beach CLS in South Carolina to Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina. Firmina was one of Brazil's first notable writers and novelists. The cable is on the verge of RFS with the wet segments done and the focus on securing back haul, equipment installation, and testing. Design capacity is 240 Tbps. The cable is open. This means each fibre pair or spectrum owner selects the Layer 1 technology vendor such as Ciena or Infinera. Hence Firmina is technology agnostic. This reflects the fact that subsea optical amplifiers are compatible with all DWDM manufacturers and hence there is no compelling reason for capacity owners to chose the same terminal equipment. The main reason for doing so was the consortium model where a single operating entity was created to manage the physical assets on behalf of the members. But this model lead to conservative, status quo decision making. Google and the ot...

Telecom Egypt and Mobily are cooperating on a new subsea cable connecting Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Telecom Egypt is a PTT whereas Mobily is a competitive Saudi Arabian mobile operator. Few details regarding the project are available. Mobily is financing the project whereas TE is the cable landing partner. This project reflects a broad trend where competitive mobile providers are becoming more involved in connecting Middle Eastern countries both to reduce their own costs and also create strategic alliances. In fact, Mobily is following the same game plan as the much larger Vodafone and Bharti Airtel. As mobile voice and data traffic becomes increasingly international, mobile providers acquire more international capacity and often the wholesale market. Typically, they buy more than they need themselves because bigger purchases lower per bit costs. Then they sell the excess capacity in the wholesale market. This is how Bharti entered the wholesale telecom market. Most likely this new cabl...

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....

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 ...

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 in...

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 international network is old), university research consortiums, governments including their national militaries, NATO, and banks. In particular, hyperscalers are e...

Mist delayed due to hard rock at Indian CLS. Construction teams find the rock between the CLS and the beach manhole is too hard for directional drilling. A new path around the rock is required.  SMW6 will only go live in 2026.  APG down 12 months since start of 2023. Cursed cable.  2Africa struggling due to delays in the Northeastern Africa quadrant.  Bifrost behind schedule. Ground breaking on the Jakarta CLS was just in June and just a few days ago for the second CLS. Figure late 2025.  Peace cable is cheap in part because 40% of potential customers will not use it because Chinese companies built and equipped it. . Equiano 10G prices are relatively high because many carriers only offering 100G. There is a dearth of 10G providers.  Anjana and Firmina on schedule because neither cable is a consortium. Consortiums are too slow and make mediocre decisions.  Bay of Bengal Gateway capacity is low and prices rising.  2Africa 100G pr...

 Like Anjana , Firmina is a content provider project. Google is the owner and bank for the 16 fibre pair (main trunk) spatial division multiplexing cable. The subsea network will connect the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina cable landing station to a Telxius CLS in Praia Grande (near Sao Paulo) and two other landings in Uruguay and Argentina. I think Google picked South Carolina because it represents a good latency compromise as some of the traffic is destined for Miami and some for Ashburn Equinix. It also improves the Google network's overall resiliency and its cloud infrastructure. I have noticed that Google has a tendency to run its fibre pairs at lower transmission speeds than Facebook. The design transmission rate for this system is 15 Tbps per pair whereas Facebook's Anjana is 20 terabits. So Firmina's design aggregate transmission rate day one is 240 Tbps. A quarter of a petabit.  Telxius has purchased a fibre pair on life-of-system IRU. I expect others will be looking ...

The wholesale telecom community eagerly anticipates the lighting of the ADC system. This 8 fibre pair cable has an intitial design capacity of 180 Tbps. It will serve China, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. NEC is building the cable. Consortium members include China Unicom, China Telecom, Singtel, Softbank, Tata, and one of the two Vietnam operator incumbents.  My sources tell me the current RFS estimate is January, 2025.  Good Singapore/Tokyo pricing available. Figure as low as $15K per monthon long term contracts.  SJC and SJC2 are relatively good complements as they do not share cable landing stations with ADC.  HK-SG 35.5 ms RTD. SG-TOKYO 66.5 ms RTD.  TOKYO-HK 44.5 ms RTD.  Singapore Landing Station: Tuas. Tokyo Landing Station: Maruyama. 

SEA-H2X: A Mystery Player Among Subsea Cables This cable is very under the radar. Very few industry insiders ever mention it. Yet, it is not an insignificant project. The main 8 fibre pair trunk directly connects Singapore and Hong Kong. It uses branching units to extend the cable to Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and a free trade Chinese port city known as Hainan. Hauwei Marine built it with advanced branching units that include optical switching as well as flexible power distribution. The cable's design capacity is 180 Tbps. At 20 Tbps a pair, I suspect there is upside throughput potential.  Interestingly enough, it is an open cable system so each consortium member selects and buys their own submarine line termination gear which I assume includes the DWDM kit. This helps to some extent alleviate the concern that Chinese security agencies have compromised the system. But there are other ways of eavesdropping other than infiltrating the terminal gear even though that is the best ...

Type of Cable System: Latest Generation Coherent Optics.  Open Cable System: Yes, and possibly the first for Southeast Asia.  Consortium Members: China Telecom, Singtel, Globe Telecom (Philippines), DITO (Philippines), Singtel, Malaysia Telecom, Global Transit, and UNN (Brunei).  Construction Status: On schedule.  Number of Fibre Pairs: 8.  Estimated RFS: 3Q2025. Day One Aggregate Throughput: 144 Tbps.  Salient Features: Three digit terabit cable between Singapore, China, HK, Malaysia, Vietname, and Philippines.  ALC connects Brunei, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, and China. It is a 8 fibre pair system with minimum throughput per pair of 18 terabits per second. Hauwei Marine is building the system which should be ready for service 3Q2025. The project co-leads are Singtel and China Telecom. Hauwei's involvement will deter many foreign carriers from using the cable's transport services, but there are extensive commercial  ties and strong telecom...

It is standard practice to bury subsea cables in shallow waters. This generally means the ocean or sea lying above the continental shelf. The shelf is really just that part of the continent that is submerged under water during the warm periods between the earth's recurring ice ages. During interglacial periods like now the shelves remain submerged and during each ice age the shelves become dry land as the sea levels fall due to less precipitation. Precipitation declines as the earth becomes colder and water is locked up in snow, ice, and glaciers on dry land. Indeed, during the last ice age the oceans were about 130 meters lower than today's levels and the continental shelves were dry land. In general, the continental shelves range from 100 to 200 meters below the water surface. At the continental shelf's edge the depths plunge down a steep slope to the bottom of the ocean. The purpose of burying is to protect a fibre optic cable from its most ferocious predators and enemi...

Google has been a path breaker in the submarine cable world. It financed the first spatial division multiplexing cable across the Atlantic, namely the 12 fibre pair Dunant system . It is also the owner of the new 16 pair  Topaz system which directly links Canada to Asia and bypasses the US. Not to mention the billion dollars Google is spending to crisscross the Pacific with a web of new cables connecting Japan, Guam, Hawaii, Chile, Australia, Fiji, French Polynesia, and other island chains. Umoja is no less surprising than its predecessors. It has two key components. A new terrestrial fibre highway in partnership with Liquid Technologies that will head Northwest from Kenya's data centres to Uganda and then South to traverse and connect Rwanda, the Democratic Congo Republic, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and finally, South Africa.  The bane of sub-Saharan Africa has been the lack of domestic long haul fibre connecting the landlocked countries to each other and to the coasts where the su...

Prior to Equiano and 2Africa, the African continent was arguably one of the most difficult places to do telecom wholesale. But India is catching up. The African continent has two open cable systems whereas India has none. Although LightStorm 's mission is to create and operate carrier neutral cable landing stations in India, I am not aware of any major cables in planning that will use them. Unfortunately, Tata and Bharti Airtel still control most  cable landing stations. And they are typically the only carriers that can provide back haul from the CLS to the rest of the country. Hence they have de facto monopolies on the subsea cables that they land. As a result a 100G wave from Mumbai to Marseille generally costs about $65K per month on the older systems, which is well above African market pricing for routers of similtar distance. Capetown to Portugal is now lower 30s at the 100G levl.  However, there is one international subsea cable that offers hope for buyers. The Bay of Be...