Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Eastern Light is building a hybrid subsea-terrestrial dark fibre ring connecting Sweden, Finland, the Baltics, Germany, Denmark, and Norway. This morning I interviewed their sales director to better understand this ambitious project. The fibre pair count is 3x 144 pairs or 432 in total. No lit optical circuits or wavelengths will be sold. Instead, customers will be leasing or purchasing via IRU fibre pairs that they will light using their own equipment. There are ILAs for the subsea spans located   on islands, but the short distances make them an option, not a necessity. However, some customers will undoubtedly prefer buying less and optically amplifying to juice the transmission rates. Because it is a dark fibre network, the customer base will be predominantly hyperscalers, big carriers including the incumbents (Telia's internationl network is old), university research consortiums, governments including their national militaries, NATO, and banks. In particular, hyperscalers are ex

A Big European Network Wants Your Business.  Huge, dense footprint encompassing both data centers and commercial buildings.  Includes the most reliable subsea cable across the English Channel linking London and Amsterdam.  Fibre in the Chunnel as well.  Both 100G and 400G wavelengths available.  For those ready to 'ascend' to the next  level, spectrum is also available.  Metro dark fibre in key markets like London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris.  Fast Provisioning. Ranges from two to four weeks.   Latency optimized routes for both general Layer 1 consumers like ISPs and financial traders.  Full diversity possible between all city pairs. 

Three Year 100G Layer 1 Transport: Low Latency As Well As Highly Diverse Routes Available  Telehouse 2 Paris/Slough Equinix;  1100€ MRC; No install charges.  MAD2/MRS2; 1100€ MRC; No install fees.  LD8/AM5; 1150€ MRC; No install fees.  London Dark Fibre Rings; Key DCs; 1000€ MRC; NRC waived.  Frankfurt Dark Fibre Rings; Key DCs; 900€ MRC; NRC waived.  Tallinn/Frankfurt; 2000€ MRC; NRC waived.  Moscow/Frankfurt; 4000€ MRC; NRC waived.  Milano/Palermo; 2300€ MRC; NRC waived. 

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