Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

WACS cumulative outage time totals 4% of operating life and ACE 2%. In contrast, Equiano has had zero wet segment faults and under 48 hours of total down time. Equiano's minor outages have been due to power failures at Lisbon Equinix (LS1) and OADC Lagos (power feed equipment failure) plus backhaul fibre cuts between CLS and CT1 (Capetown Teraco 1). WACS and ACE defenders will argue that any reliability comparison is unfair due to the older cable's longer outage history. But their outages are concentrated in subsea caverns that Equiano avoids. So Equiano's reliability edge is probably real.

It is standard practice to bury subsea cables in shallow waters. This generally means the ocean or sea lying above the continental shelf. The shelf is really just that part of the continent that is submerged under water during the warm periods between the earth's recurring ice ages. During interglacial periods like now the shelves remain submerged and during each ice age the shelves become dry land as the sea levels fall due to less precipitation. Precipitation declines as the earth becomes colder and water is locked up in snow, ice, and glaciers on dry land. Indeed, during the last ice age the oceans were about 130 meters lower than today's levels and the continental shelves were dry land. In general, the continental shelves range from 100 to 200 meters below the water surface. At the continental shelf's edge the depths plunge down a steep slope to the bottom of the ocean. The purpose of burying is to protect a fibre optic cable from its most ferocious predators and enemi...