Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

A consortium consisting of TATA Communications, Lightstorm, Microsoft, and Singtel just announced a new 16 fibre pair subsea network tailored to serve the AI data center markets in Hyderabad, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur. It includes two Indian landings, one in Southern Chennai and another at Machilipatnum, the latter being the shortest path to Hyderabad. Both Hyderabad and Lumpur host large numbers of data centers equipped with GPUs for rent to estimate AI large language models. Conversely, Singapore is a distribution point for estimated AI models. What is sometimes called AI inference. Both space and power in the city state are too limited and expensive for AI model estimation. Besides the Singapore and Indian landings, there will likely be a cable branch landing in the Malaysian province of Selangor, chosen because it is the shortest way to reach Kuala Lumpur. Public information on the new system is sparse, but it is also likely that cable will include be extended to Hyderabad and Ch...

 1. The West African 2Africa cable segment extending from South Africa to Portugal should be live late February or early March. Excellent opportunity to diversify your network while reducing overall costs. Unfortunately, not clear when the Kenya/Marseille route via the Red Sea will be ready. Many buyers are currently riding Equiano single threaded or pairing it up with older, much more expensive and outage-prone cables like WACS, MainOne or Glo-1. Between Lisbon/Lagos, Lagos/SA, and Lisbon/SA, 2Africa 100Gs should vary from the upper teens to lower twenties per month on 3 year contracts. Like Equiano, 2Africa is buried deeper than the legacy subsea networks while avoiding the danger spots like the Congo Canyon or its Ivory Coast counterpart, Le Trou Sans Fin. For countries like Ivory Coast I expect carriers to initially hold the line at $35K MRC on 3 year deals, but I expect pricing discipline will disintegrate with pricing headed into the mid-twenties.  There is no reason to ...

1. The last 2Africa splice should happen in December and the cable is likely to be fully live April, 2025. Not surprising given this is the most complicated submarine cable project ever undertaken with over 40 landings and many new cable landing stations. Right now only the Kenya to South Africa segment is live.  2. Blue-Raman is farther out than many Blue-Raman providers are willing to admit. Not 2nd quarter next year. But year's end for the all-important Marseille/Mumbai segment. Don't be fooled. Salesmen are Liars. 😀 Except for me, of course. 😊 3. I can sell you 5x 100Gs on any of the three Equiano segments today and three months down the road will have 25x 100Gs available on the Equiano cable. Plus I have affordable local loops from Lagos OADC to the other two key Lagos data centers. Moreover, the metro fibre is amplified which is important for ensuring acceptable 400G and 800G wave performance. Most Lagos