Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Asia United Group East (AUG East) cable's main trunk links Tokyo and Singapore with branches to South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, and possibly Indonesia (the consortium has stated the cable will land in Indonesia, but the map below shows Indonesia is off-net). Few project details are available. Fibre pair count is unknown, but it will be at least 16 and likely as much as 24 fibre pairs given the region's incredible Layer 3 traffic growth. Consortium members include Microsoft, Amazon, Singtel, the Japanese long haul carrier ARTERIA, Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan PTT), DREAMLINE (Korean competitive carrier), GLOBE Telecom, and Unified National Networks (Brunei). Like Candle, it avoids the South China Sea by hugging its perimeter in order to avoid Chinese permitting (China claims the South China Sea as territorial waters and requires Chinese government permits for all subsea cables laid in it) and put distance between itself and the large number of cables packed toget...

Candle is one of the more interesting Intra-Asian cables to go live over the next several years. It is the first 24 fibre pair system to serve this region. Total transmission capacity is 570 Tbps. This makes it one of the highest capacity cables on the planet. Like Apricot, Candle avoids the South China Sea due to Beijing's territorial claims and permitting demands. The main trunk links the inseparable couple of Tokyo and Singapore with branches into the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Consortium leaders include META, Softbank, and Telekom Malaysia. This project, like Apricot, exemplifies the geopolitics of American-Chinese rivalry. Hyperscalers avoid China and HK and exchange traffic at neutral Singapore. However, the routing is shorter than Apricot because Candle is deployed at the edge of the South China Sea as opposed to a long detour around Indonesia and up the East Coast of the Philippines. Like Apricot, Candle offers physical diversity to the usual suspects mak...

If you have ever heard someone say they bought a quarter or half fibre pair, it means they bought the right to use a slice of laser spectrum to create transport services. Think of spectrum as clay and optical waves as the finished product. The spectrum seller places a filter on a fibre pair that ensures the buyer only gets the purchased frequencies. A quarter fibre pair means they get 25% of the pair's total usable spectrum. Similarly, for a half fibre pair.  In general, the minimum commercial purchase is 560 Gigahertz. The amount of usable bandwidth depends on the modulation or encoding scheme. Complex encoding schemes generate more zeros and ones than simple ones. And they cost proportionally more. Using standard Ciena gear, you can squeeze about 2.5 terabits of usable capacity out of the 560 Ghz allotment. Below is the basic topolgy. Richard Norris of Ciena (2025 Suboptic Spectrum Working Group) created the slides.  Spectrum is like any other service. You can lease or buy i...

NTT and Mitsui Leasing have teamed up together with fibre optic cable manufacturer Sumitomo Corporation to fund a 16 fibre pair subsea cable costing $500 million. Design capacity is 320 Tbps. This is the second project on which NTT Data and Mitsui Leasing have cooperated. The high capacity 20 fibre pair Juno cable was the first project. It is unusual to see a large incumbent player like NTT undertaking a subsea cable project with a non-telecom company as co-owner. But the advantages are clear. Mitsui will contribute cash, but not play a major role in design, vendor selection or wholesale commercials. So it not only reduces NTT's risk by sharing funding requirements, but it gives NTT a free hand in decision making. One lesson that has become perfectly clear is that large carrier consortiums increase the likelihood of deployment delays and lengthen the entire planning cycle because decisions require consensus. Moreover, the consensus requirement makes it difficult for new approaches...

Reliable sources indicate that Google's 16 fiber pair Nuvem (Portuguese for 'cloud') cable has landed. There is typically a lag of a year between landings and RFS. So expect the system to be fully activated next Spring. I assume, without any insider knowledge, that either EXA or Telxius will acquire spectrum or a fiber pair on Nuvem. The cable's design capacity is 384 Tbps. Nuvem lands at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, also home to Anjana and Firmina. For Google, which owns the South Atlantic Firmina cable, this solves a big problem. It can move traffic between South America and Europe via the Myrtle Beach CLS. It also diversifies the routing of Google's Atlantic traffic and reduces latency for both the Southern US and Southern Europe. Interestingly enough, Google used a subsidiary as the landing partner at Myrtle Beach, and at Sines, Portugal. The hyperscalers are becoming increasingly vertically integrated. In the past it was customary to outsource landings and cab...

The standard description is that 2Africa is a 16 fibre pair cable with 180 Tbps throughput. It comes right off the 2Africa website. That public figure is a bit misleading. Only the Mediterranean and Red Sea segments have 16 pairs. The all-important West Coast segment has 8. Now these fibre pairs should individually be capable of 20 Tbps or slightly more. So West Coast transmission capacity probably does total 180 Tbps. Indeed, the Mediterranean segment could easily exceed 320 Tbps. And the same for the yet unfinished Red Sea segment. Design Capacity By Segment A. Mediterranean Sea: 16. B. Red Sea: 16. Not finished due to hostilities. C. Red/East Africa: 7. D. Red Sea/India: 9. E. West Coast: 8.

A good Tech Capital article on the new wave of American Tech Giant cables in Asia:  https://thetechcapital.com/subsea-shake-up-how-new-cables-are-wiring-southeast-asias-ai-era/. My list of the most important new cables: 1. Apricot is a 12 fibre pair Southeast Asian cable with throughput of 290 Terabits. It bypasses China, Hong Kong, and the South China Sea in a clear signal to the Chinese government to get lost. Google and META are consortium members. 2. Echo is a 12 fibre pair Pacific cable directly linking Singapore to the United States. It has 144 Tbps throughput. Google and Facebook are equal partners in the project. The lower throughput reflects the 20,000 kilometer length of the cable. Same holds true for Bifrost. 3. Bifrost is the sister cable linking Singapore to the US. Its digital horse power is 180 Tbps. 4. Waterworth is a 480 Tbps behemoth with 24 fibre pairs. We still don't know the exact landing points in Asia. It will land on both the West and East coasts ...

As most of you know, Google is building a subsea cable ring between Christmas Island and Australia. I speculated last week that Christmas Island might be where the planned South Africa to Australia Umoja cable would land. It turns out that the new cable, Dhivaru, will connect the new rising Middle East subsea cable hub of Oman to Christmas Island with a stop in the Maldives. The term 'dhivaru' refers to the rope used to control the sail on traditional Maldivian ships. So the Google plan is quite clear. Google is creating an Indian Ocean subsea cable ring connecting Africa to Australia via Umoja and the Middle East to Australia via Dhivaru and the Bosun cable linking Christmas Island to Darwin. I think that all these Google cables will be 16 or 24 fibre pairs pairs. Certainly not less than 16, but not exceeding 24, as traffic cannot justify it. At first glance there are losers and scorned parties. None of these cables land in India, which might reflect India's subsea cable r...

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 Be...