Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

The AFR-IX cable project has selected Nokia as their primary coherent optics vendor. Medusa will deploy the Nokia 1830 platform that supports coherent optics. Nokia's Infinera acquisition provides the ICE7 coherent optics. This equipment announcement illustrates how slowly the interesting Medusa project is moving. This project was announced in 2020. While it is smart to delay terminal gear purchases towards the end of the project, subsea cable projects have not historically taken upwards of six or seven years to finish. I can only speculate on the cause of these delays. The system has many landings in dysfunctional North African countries where governments are authoritarian, corrupt, incompetent or compromised by their ownership or control of PTTs. Cable ships are scarce. So booking them for the deployment may have been a big obstacle. I am disappointed that Medusa made the 'safe choice'. Big projects with lots of cash usually end up picking either Ciena or Infinera for the...

1. 2Africa is vastly superior to the older African cables in cost, performance, and footprint. It has 9x the capacity of WACS or ACE. Cross connects are capped at $150 per month at the CLS and most hand offs are at carrier neutral facilities. The cable is buried 2 meters in deep in shallow coastal waters (1000 meters or less in depth) versus 1 meter or less for older systems. It bypasses all known danger spots such as subsea canyons with their debris slides. 2. Sénégal A. ONIX is the main 2Africa POP in Dakar. Note that consortium members are free to place their SLTEs where they desire in Dakar. So other sites may also be on-net. The Dakar CLS just houses the power feed equipment. B. ONIX just opened its doors to customers so expect 2Africa service to begin near year's end. C Sénégal is a significant challenge for capacity buyers because at least one major consortium player elected to skip it. D. I have great 100G pricing for the LS1 to ONIX route at $17.5K a month on a 1 year term...