Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

This is the Peace cable's Marseille backhaul. It illustrates standard landing architecture as well as good network design. First of all, the cable comes ashore outside Marseille Port's own cable landing facilities for the sake of physical diversity and resilience. Always put some distance between a cable and others if possible. This increases the cable's value and demand for its capacity because diversity means adding it to the network portfolio improves its resilience. It is analogous to the role of diversification in a financail portfolio. Like all other subsea cables, Peace terminates in a beach manhole where it was spliced to a terrestrial fibre cable that also contains a power conductor just like the subsea cable. Then the terrestrial fiber goes to an Orange 'CLS', really just a power feed hut. From there the cable becomes part of a fully diverse fibre ring that includes dual entrances into MRS2 where most of the cable's SLTEs are kept. Most likely this fib...

As most of you know, Kenya is one of East Africa's two subsea hubs (Djibouti is the other). The Communication Authority of Kenya requires cable operators to report total lit capacity on a quarterly basis. The chart below shows the market is tight. Only Seacom was able via a large upgrade to increase lit capacity. It appears to me the local cables are maxed out. Seacom itself is getting old. It went live in July 2009. Hence it is approaching 20 years. So it is likely unless Ciena whips up more modulation magic that Seacom is at its lifetime max capacity. Note that 2Africa data has not been integrated into the official statistics, but it is important to note that international traffic is largely between Kenya and Europe, not Kenya and South Africa. Since 2Africa remains incomplete in the Red Sea, it may not affect total lit bandwidth that much. We know the local market is tight not just from the lack of growth in lit capacity, but also the high prices that 100G waves com...

AAE1; $21.5K MRC; Two Year Term. Peace; $17.5K MRC; One Year Term. A points: MRS2. Z points: SG1/SG3. Customer responsible for cross connects.

The conflict between China and the West is exacerbating bandwidth shortages on key routes like Marseille to Singapore. AAE1 is maxed out just like SWM5. Both will be upgraded this year, but I believe all the incremental capacity will be snatched up even before upgrades are finished and the capacity delivered to customers. Furthermore, China Unicom is the lead AAE1 consortium member with China Mobile also selling capacity on the system. Avoiding carriers incorporated in China makes intercontinental capacity shopping is an excruciating exercise. I've been seeking Express AAE1 100G for almost a year for clients for whom China is a red line. Bandwidth sourcing has become a marathon. 😄 In light of this, I recommend buyers consider Peace despite the fact that it is a Chinese financed project. Encryption does work. It will not protect the IP overhead, which include the IP addresses, but the data payload itself will remain safe. Moreover, there are Peace providers such as PCCW or TELIN t...