Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

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 Bengal

My best guess is that this extraordinary project goes fully live by the end of the first quarter of 2025. So far only the Kenya/Tanzania/South Africa segments have been activated and it is not clear whether they passing live traffic at this point. For more details, click on  https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/2africa-cable-set-live-between-south-africa-and-kenya/.  The 2Africa subsea network is based on the principle of carrier neutrality. So in principle cable landing station ownership or operating licenses should not matter in carrier vendor selection. But until practice proves neutrality is being honored, it is best to request capacity from a provider that operates one or both cable landing stations. This advice does not apply to routes that use carrier neutral data centres to house the CLS. So, for example, the Genoa/South Africa path uses GN1 Equinix to house the CLS in Italy and also Teraco data centres. Opportunistic CLS behavior is far less likely when a carrier neutral

Hi Everyone,  I want to thank my contacts, friends, customers, and carrier partners. In July I sold 1.5 Terabits of capacity. Mostly incredibly cheap European 100G waves. But that total does include my first Equiano 100G Nigeria/South Africa sale. 😀 A noteworthy achievement, and a personal best, which is highly gratifying. Thanks again.  Regards,  Roderick.