Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

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

Transmission Technology: Spatial Division Multiplexing.  Length: 16,026 kilometers. Almost 10,000 US miles. Consortium Members: Google and Facebook. Type of Consortium: Open cable model.  Construction Status: Behind schedule due to permitting delays for Indonesian waters. Fifty-fifty control probably also slowed decision making.  Number of Fibre Pairs: Main trunk has 12. Estimated RFS: 1st or 2nd quarter 2025. Day One Aggregate Throughput: 144 Tbps.  Salient Features: First low latency, direct cable between Singapore and USA with no intermediate breakouts. One Indonesian branching unit. No telecom carrier consortium members. Amazon and Facebook land the cable themselves in Singapore and California.  Google announced  announced the 12 fibre pair SDM Echo project in early 2021 with a planned 2023 launch. However, permitting delays have slowed construction and the project is now expected to be RFS 2025. In addition, it is highly plausible that the 50-50 Facebook/Google control split sl

Type of Cable System: Spatial Division Multiplexing.  Consortium Members: Amazon, Facebook, Keppel, and Telin. Construction Status: Behind schedule due to permitting delays for Indonesian waters.  Number of Fibre Pairs: Main trunk has 12. Some branches have 6.  Estimated RFS: 1st or 2nd quarter 2025. Day One Aggregate Throughput: 125 Tbps.  Salient Features: First low latency, three digit terabit cable between Singapore and USA.  Bifrost is the name of the burning rainbow bridge that connects Earth to the Realm of the Gods in Norse mythology. This new 12 fibre pair system is a wide lane digital bridge between Southeast Asia and North America (lands in the US and Mexico). It is the first direct single subsea cable solution connecting Singapore, Indonesia, and Philippines to North America that does not touch China or Hong Kong. The key consortium members include Facebook, Telin, Keppel (a new subsea player providing the Singapore landing), and Amazon. Singtel has some lit capacity on the

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 traffic flows between Singapor

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

I've seen a lot of interest in routes bypassing the Red Sea and Egypt. Not surprising given the triple whammy of AAE1 , EIG, and Seacom/Tata outages lasting over four months. It is possible to devise end-to-end Frankfurt/Singapore and Marseille/Singapore bypass routes by using subsea cables that connect Mumbai or Oman to Singapore. That part is relatively easy and straightforward. As the chart below shows, there are lots of subsea cables connecting the two great cities.  The key India/Singapore cables include 1. I2I. Bharti Airtel cable.  2. Tata Indicom.  3. Mist (2025). 4. AAE1. 5. Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) 6. India Asia Express (IAX). 7. SWM4, SWM5, and soon SWM6.  8. Several more.  Neither I2I nor Indicom are useful in constructing bypass routes because their owners charge extremely high prices. The Bay of Bengal cable is standard in bypass solutions for two reasons. Its capacity is less expensive and it also lands in Oman, thereby completely avoiding the problems associate