Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

1. Carriers begin small scale long haul hollow core fibre deployments in the next two years. Deployments balloon by 2030. The driving force is a one third reduction in round trip latency. This makes it attractive for Internet backbones and Tier 2 ISPs. Hollow core fibre can use a much broader range of infrared spectrum leading to a doubling of bandwidth.  Microsoft has already deployed its hollow core product (Lumensity subsidiary) not only in Azure data centers, but between them. Hybrid cables containing both Lumensity hollow core and standard single mode fibre have been deployed between European Azure data centers. Route miles deployed and carrying live traffic totals 1280 kilometers. See for full details: https://lnkd.in/dKhc4ANj.  2. The Saudis have an opportunity to dethrone Egypt as the Middle East gateway to Europe, but it requires they sharply drop pricing on their long haul routes.  The Israelis can also participate if they stop the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza s...

A point: DX1, Dubai. Z point: FR5, Frankfurt. Service: Layer 1 Wavelength. Bandwidth: 10G. MRC: $17.5K. NRC: $5K. RTD: Approximately 100 ms. Routing: Dubai, Riyadh, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus, Marseille, Frankfurt. Customer responsible for cross connects. 

Hollow core enjoys 33% lower latency than standard solid core single mode fibre. Moreover, it offers at least 50% more bandwidth because a much wider spectrum band can be used. In contrast, solid glass is hobbled by high attenuation outside the C and L bands. A final advantage is hollow core exhibits little chromatic dispersion. Single mode fibre is bedeviled by polar mode and chromatic dispersion. In each case, the speed of light through glass varies sufficiently by wavelength to blur the signal by the time it reaches the far end. The coherent optics revolution was largely about using digital signal processing to unscramble the signal or more precisely to use physics to work backwards and infer the original, pristine signal. But hollow core technology until now has been stymied by very high optical attenuation. This simply means the light fades rapidly as it passes through the hollow core. The light is absorbed rapidly by the surrounding glass border due to the absence of refraction. ...

Seacom announced today the Son of Seacom cable project. It's very ambitious with the goal of connecting Singapore to Marseille with a branch going down the East Africa Coast and up to Angola. I estimate the cable will land in 20 countries including Singapore, India, Pakistan, Oman, Dubai, Djibouti, Sudan, Egypt, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, and what appears to be Angola, but might be one of the two Congos. The press release claims it will a 48 fibre pair architecture. I am not sure what that means. A 48 fibre pair cable would make Seacom 2.0 one of the most expensive and technically challenging cables ever dropped in the water. In fact, no one has deployed a repeatered 48 subsea cable over long distances I believe the Trans-Atlantic Anjana cable holds the record at 24 fibe pairs and 480 Tbps design capacity. I strongly believe Seacom management will be forced to downsize their ambitions. A much more likely figure will 16 fibre pairs or 24 with ...

 AI Industry Implosion Is Just A Matter Of Time Too much $$$ chasing too few and highly imperfect applications. Yann LeCun is a towering figure in AI research and Facebook's Chief AI researcher. Won the most prestigious award in computer science, namely the 2018 Turning prize. Also researcher at the New York Courant Institute. 

Most West African coast cables land in Portugal. The buyer's challenge is that are few connectivity providers available to carry that traffic to the rest of Europe. Arelion and Zayo are both off-net. My guess is Arelion will light layer 1 services near the end of 2025. What providers are available do not offer a lot of physical diversity as most are using fibre on the high tension power lines.  I came across Lyntia roughly a year ago via an EUNetworks introduction. This wholesale network is the subsidiary of Naturgy, a multinational electricity and gas company. The company is a power and gas provider owning a very dense distribution network in Spain and Portugal.  Lyntia's fibre is in the gas pipeline right of way with a little bit on high tension power lines. The network enjoys unique physical diversity as its Layer 1 competitors have bought IRU's on a rival power line company. Unlike some of its competitors, Lyntia enjoys rock solid financial stability as a subsidiary of ...

A point: FR5; Z point: Any Singapore Equinix facility; 10G; Layer 1; $35,750 MRC; 3 Year. The Middle Eastern and segment is route protected.