Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Most Layer 1 bandwidth buyers focus their efforts on EXA's three Hibernia Atlantic cables, Aquacoms' AEC-1 and AEC-2 assets, and Marea and Dunant. As a group, those subsea networks probably account for 80% of wavelength transactions across the Pond. Two lesser well known alternatives are Amitié and Grace Hopper. Amitié means friendship in French. Not surprisingly, it connects Boston via a Lynn, Massachusetts landing at a Hibernia CLS to Bordeaux, France. This spatial division multiplexing 16 fibre pair main trunk cable is a Meta project. Meta owns 80% of the network capacity with the balance held by the minority partners of Orange, Vodafone, and Aquacoms. To be more precise, Amitié branches in the Eastern Atlantic to the UK and France. Twelve fibre pairs land at Bude, Cornwall, and sixteen pairs at the Orange La Porge CLS, a short distance from Bordeaux. Note that 16 pairs land in the US, but a total of 28 on the European side. The branching unit is using optical switching to

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

 Anjana - The New Atlantic Leviathan Meta's Anjana cable will set a new record for Atlantic bandwidth with 24 fibre pairs each operating at 20 terabits for a total of 480 Tbps. It goes without saying that the cable is a spatial division multiplexing design. There has been a steady move South for new US cable landings over the last 15 years; Anjana is no exception. Around 2000 all Trans-Atlantic networks landed near New York or Boston. Then Marea and Dunant landed at Virginia Beach so they could directly link to Ashburn Equinix at the lowest possible latency as well as avoid 'hot spots' like New York. Now Anjana will land at Mrytle Beach, South Carolina. The farthest point South for a Atlantic cable connecting Europe and North America. See the CLS and beach manhole below. In Europe Anjana will land on Spain's North Coast at the new Telxius CLS in the city of Santander. Resiliency is the name of the game in the subsea cable world. That means physical diversity.  Meta has

Key Observations Lots of Faster cable capacity available. Third fastest Japan/US sysrem. TY4/1 Wilshire or CLS/DC combinations available. Figure $13.5 MRC to $17.5K MRC depending on exact end points on a 1 year contract.  Chinese carriers dominate AAE1 and they report no capacity left. Other Asian carriers were reselling Chinese capacity. Hence their cupboards are now bare as well.  Only 10G capacity available. SMW5 is also almost fully depleted. At this point it is a so-called 'diversity play' for AAE1. Despite the tight Red Sea lane fit and the fact that Egypt is single point of failure.  Peace cable is not ready til 1Q2025, but pricing is available and orders are being taken. One SVP of sales told me that Peace will put downward pressure on the Marseille/Singapore route. I do think that will happen, but not by itself. It is Peace plus SWM6 that will temporarily lower prices. Temporary because AAE1 and SWM5 are depleted, but demand is steadily growing. No end to the demand ts