Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

The IAX cable links Chennai and Mumbai to Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Jio Reliance and China Mobile are the primary consortium members but press releases suggest there is a silent digital giant partner as well. An educated guess would be Google, Microsoft or Facebook. Information is scarce on the system. It will likely be 16 pairs like its IEX counterpart. This suggests that design capacity will easily exceed 200 Tbps. India desperately more bandwidth, but given Jio's leading role it is not clear it will lower Layer 1 pricing. On the flip side, China Mobile would be unlikely to participate in a project unless it could provide end-to-end connectivity to its customers. So I believe modest optimism is the correct frame of mind. 

Technology: Standard 100G wave coherent optics. Shorter repeater spacings to maximize per fibre pair throughput.  Fibre Pairs: 8.  Founding Fathers: Facebook and Microsoft Consortium Members: Facebook, Microsoft, and Telxius.  RFS: May, 2018.  Route: Direct Ashburn Equinix to Spain.  Landings: Virginia Beach, VA. Bilbao, Spain.  Notable Features: First cable to directly link Ashburn Equinix to Europe. Also first cable to adopt the open cable system model where each consortium member selects their own submarine line termination gear and owns either fibre pairs or spectrum.  Potential Throughput: 224 Tbps.  Marea is the first cable to give the cold shoulder to New York City and the UK. It directly links Ashburn Equinix via a Virginia Beach landing to Continental Europe with a Spanish landing. The cable completely bypasses the UK and the Northeastern US. This reflected Ashburn Equinix' rising importance and the desire of network planners  to avoid NYC with its complex conduit systems

Many networks have Paris and London POPs. Unfortunately,  the English Channel is teeming with cargo and fishing vessels. So subsea cable outages are common and made worse by the fact that only three new subsea cable has been built in the last 20 years, Scylla, Zeus, and CrossChannel. Most of the older cables are more susceptible to outages because undersea surveys and burial standards have sharply improved in the last 15 years.  In contrast, the Chunnel consists of two railroad tunnels plus a service tunnel carved out of solid rock, mostly chalk, approximately 75 meters below the sea floor and protected from sea water by a layer of clay. Fibre has been installed in these tunnels and several long haul providers offer the route at prices comparable to those on subsea cables. This is undoubtedly the most reliable route between the two countries and I highly recommend it as part of any network linking the UK to the European Continent. Feel free to contact me for more information and pricin

  A good primer on the physical structure of an optical fibre strand with some basic physics to give you insight into how it really works. Optical fibre is an ultra pure, high quality glass designed to carry infrared laser signals encoding bits, in other words, zeros and ones. It consists of a core which is the optical highway for the laser light, a cladding designed to protect the core and prevent external light from reaching the core or light traversing the core from escaping, and finally, soft and hard plastic coatings as further protection. For full details, see https://learn.aflglobal.com/enterprise/the-basic-structure-of-optical-fiber.

2Africa Landings Luando, Angola Manama, Bahrain Moroni, Comoros Muanda, Democratic Republic of Congo Pointe-Noire, Congo Abidjan, Ivory Coast Djibouti City, Djibouti Port Said, Egypt Ras Ghareb, Egypt Suez, Egypt Zafarana, Egypt Marseille, France Libreville, Gabon Accra, Ghana Tympaki, Greece Mumbai, India Al Faw, Iraq Genoa, Italy Mombasa, Kenya Mtwapa, Kenya Kuwait City, Kuwait Mahajanga, Madagascar Maputo, Mozambique Nacala, Mozambique Kwa Ibo, Nigeria Lagos, Nigeria Barka, Oman Salalah, Oman Karachi, Pakistan Caravelos, Portugal Doha, Quatar Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia Duba, Saudi Arabia Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Yanbu, Saudi Arabia Dakar, Senegal Carana, Seychelles Berbera, Somalia Mogadishu, Somalia Amanzimtoti, South Africa Duynefontein, South Africa Ggeberha, South Africa Yzerfontein, South Africa Barcelona, Spain Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain Port Sudan, Sudan Dar Es Salam, Tanzania Abu Dhabi, UAE Kalba, UAE Bude, UK Sources:  https://www.2africacable.net/, https://wiocc.net/2afr