Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

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...

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...

Seacom went live two days ago and EIG is now being repaired. The repairs revealed that an anchor damaged the cables and hence vindicate my theory that the Rubymar was responsible. Bloomberg quoted me on this issue shortly after the outages started The Houthis hit this ship with a missile and it dropped anchor so the crew could evacuate in life boats. It then drifted over 20 kilometers scrapping the sea floor with its huge anchor which probably weighs five to ten tons. Although Red Sea cables are usually buried, the sea floor is generally soft silt and a heavy anchor will simply sink through the silt and then plow it as the ship drifts. In general, most subsea outages around the world happen on the shallow continental shelf. That means shallow coastal waters where ships damage them via fishing or anchor dropping. Ships drop anchor to achieve a full stop, to stabilize it in transit during bad weather or steady it during an evacuation like the Rubymar.  The real question surrounding ...