Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

The beauty of publicly traded telecom infrastructure companies is that they cannot shroud their business in secrecy. Below is a very high level breakdown of Equinix revenues over the last several years. In 2023 the company got $1.9 billion from interconnection, which is its euphemism for cross connects. It comprised 19.4% of 2023 revenues. I must confess I am bit puzzled by how slowly the cross connect revenues are growing because Equinix offers no volume discounts (in Europe even big long haul carriers get only a few Euros off) to anybody. Moreover, Equinix is indispensable in many cities like Zurich, London (Slough, UK), and Amsterdam (AM5 is the best single peering point in the city). A 3Q2024 investor presentation says the company has 478,000 total interconnections. Let's assume each is a cross connect. That implies $3,974 USD per year or $331 per month, which seems too low. I invite readers to comment if they have an idea of what explains the discrepancy between the standard $...

Dutch governments need to stop being wimps and let the data centre industry grow. There is a moratorium on Amsterdam data centre build permits as well as power upgrades. Government leaders are supposed to lead, not cower in their offices afraid of public opinion. I have clients who cannot colocate in Amsterdam facilities such as AM5 because no spare power capacity is available. The Dutch government should long term add nuclear facilities to handle growing long term power demand and beef up the transmission networks as opposed to public-pleasing moratoriums on data centre building. Or pushing solar panels for a wet and rainy climate at high latitude. Picture below of AM5, one of the best peering points in the Netherlands. Clock on  https://thetechcapital.com/a-regulatory-chokehold-is-suffocating-amsterdams-data-centre-growth/ . 

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 international network is old), university research consortiums, governments including their national militaries, NATO, and banks. In particular, hyperscalers are e...