Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Mombasa/Dar es Salaam; $15,100; 1 Year; 2Africa. Mombasa/Djibouti; $15,100; 1 Year; 2Africa. Mombasa/Amanzimtoti; $18,100; 1 Year; 2Africa. Capetown/Amanzimtoti; $10,900; 1 Year; 2Africa.

 My calculations indicate that at least 2.5 Petabits per second of new subsea cable transmission capacity landing in Europe over the next few years. Note that this is initial capacity, and undoubtedly, there will be upgrades in due time. Below is my calculation. The Amazon project is stealth at this time and I assumed a lower bound of 100 Tbps. Consider the Initial Capacity of New And Pending Cables: 1. Equiano: 144 Tbps. Live 2023. 2. 2Africa: 180 Tbps. Live 2025. 3. Blue-Raman: 218 Tbps. Live 2026. 4. Anjana: 480 Tbps. Live 2026.  5. Nuvem: 384 Tbps. Live 2027. 6. Medusa: 480 Tbps. Live 2025.  7. Africa-1: 160 Tbps. Live 2025. 8. Peace. 192 Tbps. Live December 2024. 9. SWM6: 125 Tbps. Live early 2026. 10. New Amazon Cable: US/Ireland. 2028. At least 100 Tbps. Total: 2.5 Petabits Per Second Initial Capacity.

The Africa-1 cable is landing today in Duba, Saudi Arabia, a small port city, where a new CLS awaits it. Right now East African countries are suffering severe subsea cable capacity shortages that have driven 100G prices between Kenya and South Africa into the $40K to $65K per month range. Same for Kenya to Marseille. Only Seacom, 2Africa and Eassy link together the key East African counties. Seacom is a low capacity 2000 era system with chromatic dispersion fibre. Just a couple terabits per second. Eassy has more capacity at 36 Tbps, but both cables are in any case almost completely maxed out. 2Africa has huge capacity with an initial design throughput of 180 Tbps, but it is not connected to Europe via the Red Sea due to the recent Houthi hostilities. The only nearby telecom hub is South Africa. However, much of the East African traffic is ultimately destined for Europe. Hence the delays in lighting the Marseille/Mombasa 2Africa segment which would relieve the network congestion are th...

Nordunet's cost estimates are way off base. It is not a 200 million Euro project, but a half billion Euro project. It would require a special cable ship designed for Arctic climates together with two icebreakers to be on the safe side. The proposed paths are as long as many non-Arctic cables whose construction costs were in the $200 million to $300 million range. But those projects did not require specially designed cable ships nor icebreakers for deployment or for the necessary geophysical survey undertaken before construction. The cable would probably be double armoured and the design phase costs alone probably twice the norm.  So it is a given that upfront costs will be extraordinarily high. And here is the dagger in the heart: ice scouring. Floating glaciers scrape the bottom of the sea floor in the Arctic coastal areas. One or two meter burial won't be enough for the Northwest passage route raising the cost. But going deeper for burial may require special equipment or not...

The EU recently gave 6 million Euros to the Northern European Polar Connect Initiative which aims to build a subsea cable connecting Japan to Europe via the Far North. See the map below for routing. NorduNet is a network linking universities and research organizations in the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway. It is taking the lead on this project which is looking at two alternatives routes to reach Asia. One route would be via the North Pole and the other via the Northwest Passage. This would give Europe access to Asia without traversing the US or Canada and hence offer better privacy and more secure communication as well much lower latency. Because the proposed paths are highly diverse to the usual suspects of Atlantic cables landing in Canada or the US, they might be attractive for resiliency purposes. One can imagine carriers splitting their traffic between the Polar routes and the more traditional cross-US routes for Pacific/European traffic. C...

***5x 100Gs; CT1/LS1; Equiano The Stable Cable; $21K MRC Per Wave ***1x 100G; Johannesberg Teraco/London; WACS; $29.5K;Protected Back Haul; Photo credit: submarinenetworks.com

Won't last more than few days. Layer 1. 100G Wavelength. Marseille Interxion to Singapore Equinix. Buy now or your boss will forever loathe you. 😃

Microsoft has filed an application to do a geophysical survey for a new subsea fibre optic cable connecting Ireland to the UK. The Irish Maritime authority has blessed the application. Tuskar is the name of an Irish lighthouse located on a rock in the Irish Sea. It was the first Irish facility to be powered by electricity. The cable's tentative design is to land at Kilmore Quay on the Irish side with the British landing at Newgale in Wales. Again, I expect a 96 fibre pair unrepeated cable system.  Some of my readers have expressed skepticism that Microsoft would be building its own cable when there have been several carrier builds across the Irish Sea in the last five years. EUNetwork's Rockabill unrepeatered cable has 96 fibre pairs; it went live in 2019. Aquacomms CeltixConnect-2 cable is an unrepeatered system that went live March 2022. And that's not at all. Zayo has 24 fibre pairs on the power cable Interconnector East-West.  But here's the thing. I don't think...

Microsoft has applied for several maritime usage licenses to do ship geophysical surveys of proposed routes for new subsea cables connecting Ireland to the UK. Its SOBR2 cable will connect Ireland to Wales as opposed to the usual Cornwall landings. It will apparently land at Malahide Beach or Portmarnock on the Irish side. Another possibility is a branch with a landing at both Malahide and Portmarnock. Details are very sparse on the cable itself. My educated guess would be a 96 pair unrepeatered cable because it minimizes capex while maximizing bandwidth punch with such systems easily pushing a couple petabits per second. The site survey will focus on the top three meters of the sea floor. It will take samples to ascertain the texture and composition of material with an eye towards a deep burial of the cable itself if possible. The samples will help determine not only burial depth but also how well armoured the cable will be. The Irish Sea is notorious for fibre cuts due to trawler fis...

I predicted a couple months ago that EXA was consolidating the Atlantic and would purchase Aqua Comms, which has been struggling, and whose estimated value was written down by its former owner, an infrastructure fund. An financial disclosure indicates that the buy price is a mere $54 million for all of Aqua Comms' assets. That $54 million includes the the four fibre pair AEC1, two fibre pairs on AEC2, which is a consortium project, and two Irish Sea cables. That's not very good. In fact, it is terrible. The price is probably 15% of of construction costs. It's a great contrarian EXA move because EXA can absorb the company's assets, but fire 99% of the employees. So the revenue should improve the bottom line. Aqua Comms illustrate how a lot of venture capitalists are bullish on telecom infrastructure without really understanding the challenges of making it successful (they should hire me for a lot of money to educate them). 😃 So what went wrong? Poor operational performa...

Might close my first 100G into India today. 🙂 I recommend focusing for the next six months on the India/Singapore roiute as Red Sea construction of IEX, 2Africa, and SWM6 is on hold due to the possibility of missile strikes. In contrast, IAX and Mist do not face these issues. I understand that both Marseille and Singapore are essential peering points, but Marseille/Mumbai is likely to be hell for the foreseeable future. Put your incremental effort where it earns the greatest incremental return. Today is it is Mumbai or Chennai to Singapore. I am always available to provide your advice and guidance on your hunt for a Great Deal. 😃 

Bad news and also mildly bad news. AAE1 is down due to a fault in the Red Sea located between the Zafrana, Egypt and Saudi branching units. The outage began December 31st. Pearls 2Africa (depicted in the map) will go live near year's end, but it has only one fibre pair down the African East Coast from Oman to Kenya. China Mobile owns it.  The Big Picture is that the subsea cable world is facing a tough year. Right now Peace is the only high capacity cable live connecting Marseille to Singapore via the Red Sea. AAE1 is down. 2Africa, SWM6, Blue-Raman, and probably IEX cannot be completed due to the threat of Red Sea missile strikes. We can only hope that diplomacy results in safe passage for the cable ships. Otherwise persistent capacity shortages will only grow worse. I do expect AAE1 to be repaired within eight weeks as a cable ship can bypass Yemen via the Suez cable. But beware most cable ships are deploying new cables like Blue and Medusa. My guess is that the Indian owned cabl...

As you know, the Rubymar dragged its anchor for 31 kilometers after its crew abandoned it last spring. In so doing it severed the AAE1, Seacom/TGN, and Eassy cables. After several months stalemate, the Houthi rebels gave the consortiums permission to repair them as long as it was done in a low key fashion. The fact that AAE1 lands in Yemen gave the Houthis political cover with their supporters. But the reality is that since then the Houthis have refused to agree to refrain from targeting cable ships laying new systems like 2Africa, Blue-Raman, and SWM6. This is why these projects are currently well behind schedule. There is no way to complete them in the near future as designed. Probably the only way forward right now would be build terrestrially along side the Red Sea through Saudi Arabia. In other words, bypass that part of the Red Sea adjacnet to Yemen. For example, Oman could hand off Blue-Raman traffic to Saudi Arabia which could take it across the desert and essentially bypass th...

Venture capitalists have a poor infrastructure investment record. Their senior management typically has no startup telecom experience complemented by naive ideas that surging Internet traffic guarantees price stability. In addition, they have little idea of the operational challenge of creating a lean, mean sales machine that includes great customer experience and network performance. A really good company requires really good people. Digital 9's liquidation of its telecom infrastructure portfolio highlights a host of key issues. The portfolio includes the ailing Aquacomms cable network which Digital 9 is shopping. I speculate EXA will buy it as part of a wise strategy to consolidate the wholesale Trans-Atlantic market into a two carrier EXA/Telxius duopoly. Aquacomms was an attempt to double down on the Atlantic and Irish Sea routes despite glaring overcapacity that caused NYC/London 10Gs to fall from $38K in 2005 to $850-$1300 today. Yes, optical technology improved dramatically ...

 Firmina is a spatial division multiplexing 16 fibre pair cable with initial design capacity of 320 Tbps. It is named after a Brazilian abolitionist, Maria Firmina dos Reis, who was Brazil's first novelist. Google is the owner. Telxius has acquired a fibre pair on the system as part of a complex deal that involves providing landing and back haul in Brazil. Right now Google is selling fibre pair and spectrum capacity to recoup its capex. Cirion Technologies has also purchased a pair. Stonepeak Investments, an  infrastructure investor, purchased Lumen's South American assets which operate today as Cirion. Firmina is substantially complete, but no RFS announcement so far.  Distinguishing Features: 1. It is possible to power the entire cable from either the US or Brazilian landing stations in case the other CLS experiences a black out.  2. Firmina is the third South American hyperscaler subsea cable. Google is the owner of all three.  3. Firmina is the first spatial...

The planned Bulikala cable connects Google's modular prefabricated Guam CLS to Fiji. It is a part of a grand plan to dramatically increase Pacific subsea throughput and resiliency via a web of island hopping fibre optic cables. These small islands offer diverse network routing. They also offer power, which is the gating factor for throughput over long distances. Bulikala deployment is well underway with a branch recently landing on Tuvalu island, which has only satellite connectivity. The branch is a joint project of Google and the island's PTT. Most Pacific islands are poor due to limited resources, geographic isolation, and poor digital connectivity. They are also threatened by rising water due to global warming. Even the Hawaii island chain is relatively poor with Honolulu being surprisingly run down.  There is a mighty power play at work here. The US government provides aid to these islands sprinkled across the Pacific Ocean for their on-land digital infrastructure while Go...

The planned Bulikala cable connects Google's modular prefabricated Guam CLS to Fiji. The branch is right below Guam on the map at the bottom of this page. It is part of a large scale Google project costing a billion dollars  to dramatically increase Pacific subsea throughput and resiliency via a web of island hopping fibre optic cables. These small islands such as Fiji, Christmas Island, the Marshalls, and Polynesia offer diverse network routing that is particularly valuable in case of a subsea cable segment goes dark. They also offer power, which is the gating factor for throughput over long distances. All power conductors lead to voltage drawdown which limits bandwidth. Boosting power at intermediate points will allow higher transmission rates and lead to better return on the capital invested. The overall plan is to connect Japan, Guam, Hawaii, many islands such as Fiji and French Polynesia to the US in such a way as to increase both throughput via power stops at small islands a...

The telecom industry is gently nudging our fearful government leaders who think Russian incompetence has reached the point that they would use a Chinese cargo ship and its anchor for sabotage. I strongly urge the Russian intelligence to sue Western leaders for slandering their professional competency.  If Russia wanted to damage a subsea cable, they would use timer charges and the ship's crew would be a thousand miles away in Moscow drinking vodka and feasting on Beluga caviar when it exploded. Just like the Ukrainian special forces which probably blew up the Nordstream 2 pipeline to ensure all Russian gas to Europe goes through the Ukraine. They rented a Russian ship which was over 800 kilometers away in international waters when the charges were triggered. See https://blog.telegeography.com/what-to-know-about-submarine-cable-breaks? for the full article. 

Sources tell me that the Iceland Iris cable was originally a Vodafone project that FARICE effectively highjacked. FARICE is a government-owned telecom incumbent with limited regulatory oversight due to legal loopholes. Indeed, Vodafone even built a data center in Reykjavik to serve as the cable landing station that the data center company Borealis eventually bought after Vodafone gave up on the subsea cable project. FARICE used its control of telecom infrastructure to block Vodafone. Here is the initial Vodafone project announcement: https://lnkd.in/d2aYnWnJ. Emerald was Vodafone's name for a high capacity cable project that would connect the US to Ireland and including an Iceland branch. After the branch was dropped, Aquacomms finished the project under the name of AEC-1. The projects reflects the insider nature of Icelandic society. Because Iceland has only 400,000 people competition in many industries is limited and everyone knows everyone and everything. For example, a handful...

Google is leading a project to create two new subsea cables collectively known as Australia Connect. Its partners include the entrepreneurial Subco , Vocus, and NextDC. Subco is a private operator of subsea cables. It owns the Oman-Australia cable and the SMAP cable that when finished will connect Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney. Vocus is a competitive Australian carrier. I strongly suspect the Australian and US militaries are silent partners in the cable for reasons I outline below. The Bosun cable will link Darwin on Australia's Northern Coast to Christmas Island and then continue onward to Singapore. The Interlink cable connects Sydney to Perth and Perth up to Christmas Island. This project has military written all over it because Christmas Island could be used as a surveillance node for the US-Australian-Japanese military alliance. Equipped with radar the island can survey the the Southern approaches to Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. The fact that the island is gett...