Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Iceland's New Audur Subsea Cable Farice is building a new 16 to 24 fibre pair cable named after an Icelandic matriarch, Audur The Deep Minded, who sailed from Scotland to Iceland in the 9th century during the first wave of migration to the island. The cable lands in Southeast Iceland and in Scotland near Glasgow. The Icelandic backhaul will be fibre, but the British side is most likely spectrum. Farice views Audur as a replacement for the 22 year old FARICE-1. The ship survey will take place in the summer of 2027 with RFS planned for 2030. Audur falls into the monster capacity cable category. Sixteen fibre pairs can easily achieve 320 Tbps with 24 fibre pairs almost reaching a half petabit per second. What is really striking about this is Iceland's population, which although rapidly increasing due to immigration, is just shy of 400K. Undoubtedly, this reflects Farice's bullish assessment of data center demand driven by cheap hydro power and modest cooling needs. Although Ic...

Few details are available at this point. It has been clear to me for some time that the 2Africa and Equiano networks are insufficient to meet growing African Internet traffic. This reflects two factors. First, the limited number of Equiano landings: Togo, Nigeria, Namibia, and South Africa. Secondly, the 2Africa has only 180 Tbps of capacity, but serves 17 African states. Moreover, it also serves many Middle East countries, Pakistan, and India. The Nigerian government is concerned that the country lacks subsea resiliency. Published reports hint at its desire for a new route, but it is not obvious what it would be. One possibility is a direct US-Nigeria link perhaps connecting Atlanta or Ashburn Equinix to Lagos. Or perhaps a Nigeria to France or Spain direct link. Bloomberg article on subject: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-23/nigeria-in-advanced-talks-with-google-for-new-undersea-cable.