Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Airraq is a new subsea cable connecting important Alaskan Coast communities. Not surprisingly, most remote, sparsely populated areas in the US are bandwidth famished. Because Alaska shares no border with the Continental US, subsea cables are used to connect it to the lower 48 US states with satellite and microwave back haul the usual Last Mile connectivity in remote cities and villages. Coastal cables like Airraq are used to aggregate traffic and then hand it off to the international cables that haul it down the British Columbia coast to Washington or Oregon. The coastal aggregation cables effectively eliminate the Middle and Last Mile congestion since most communities lie on the coast or next to inland rivers.  This new cable is a 12 fibre pair, spatial division multiplexing system (SDM) landing in three locations and then using terrestrial arteries to reach cities and towns. Despite being SDM, the throughput levels are relatively low ranging from 1.6 Tbps to 3.2 Tbps, which is reason

The American carrier Zayo has an extensive European wide area network as well as a highly ranked international Internet backbone. Its relatively new subsea Zeus cable links Amsterdam to London via a double armored 96 fibre pair system buried on average between 2 and 3 meters deep. Although Zayo's press releases nowhere states it, any 96 fibre pair cable is undoubtedly unrepeatered just like Scylla and CrossChannel because a repeatered system would probably require more power than possible. Repeatered 96 pair cables do not exist. And like Scylla, Zeus uses ultra-low loss fibre. Probably the Corning SMF28 product. The cable's current throughput is 2.6 petabits per second with the potential to do up to 4 petabits.  One reason both Scylla and Zeus are buried so deep is that the North Sea sediment layers off the  Netherland's coasts are not stable. They move carried by the North Sea's strong wind and sea currents. This necessitates deeper burial to ensure the cable does no

Besides Scylla  and Zeus , Crosslake's CrossChannel is the only other new English Channel cable built in the last 20 years. There was a 1998-2002 subsea construction boom and in wake of the subsequent capacity glut affecting the Atlantic and Europe, all further building ceased until the last 5 years. Scylla and CrossChannel are similar in many respects : unrepeatered 96 fibre pair double armoured cables owned by private operators as opposed to consortiums and both backed by infrastructure funds. The consortium model is less common in North America and Europe because there are fewer barriers to entry such as monopoly or semi-deregulated telecom markets. So including the incumbents in order to facilitate landing a subsea cable is unnecessary. It is interesting that all three cables are unrepeatered. Prior to their construction, most or all of the English Channel cables were low fibre count, repeatered networks. I suspect improvements in fibre purity and more importantly coherent opti

Three Year 100G Layer 1 Transport: Low Latency As Well As Highly Diverse Routes Available  Telehouse 2 Paris/Slough Equinix;  1100€ MRC; No install charges.  MAD2/MRS2; 1100€ MRC; No install fees.  LD8/AM5; 1150€ MRC; No install fees.  London Dark Fibre Rings; Key DCs; 1000€ MRC; NRC waived.  Frankfurt Dark Fibre Rings; Key DCs; 900€ MRC; NRC waived.  Tallinn/Frankfurt; 2000€ MRC; NRC waived.  Moscow/Frankfurt; 4000€ MRC; NRC waived.  Milano/Palermo; 2300€ MRC; NRC waived. 

The English Channel has been a sore spot for the wholesale telecommunications industry. The key problem is the abundance of freight and fishing vessels. Ships are the number one global cause of subsea cable outages. They drop their anchors to come to a halt and also drag them to maintain stability in rough seas. For example, last autumn a Chinese freight ship called the New New Polar Bear dragged its anchor through the Baltic Sea knocking out a gas pipeline as well as the fibre optic cable attached to it. This Spring a Houthi missile hit the Rubymar cargo ship in the Red Sea; consequently, the crew abandoned ship. To do so, they dropped the anchor to halt the vessel so the crew could safely depart in the life boats. Afterwards, the Rubymar drifted 31 kilometers and its anchor severed 3 major subsea arteries of European/Asian traffic, namely the AAE1, EIG, and jointly owned Seacom/Tata cables. It took five months to get those three cables fixed due to the ongoing Houthi rebel conflict.

Many networks have Paris and London POPs. Unfortunately,  the English Channel is teeming with cargo and fishing vessels. So subsea cable outages are common and made worse by the fact that only three new subsea cable has been built in the last 20 years, Scylla, Zeus, and CrossChannel. Most of the older cables are more susceptible to outages because undersea surveys and burial standards have sharply improved in the last 15 years.  In contrast, the Chunnel consists of two railroad tunnels plus a service tunnel carved out of solid rock, mostly chalk, approximately 75 meters below the sea floor and protected from sea water by a layer of clay. Fibre has been installed in these tunnels and several long haul providers offer the route at prices comparable to those on subsea cables. This is undoubtedly the most reliable route between the two countries and I highly recommend it as part of any network linking the UK to the European Continent. Feel free to contact me for more information and pricin

Nigeria is one of Africa's key telecom hubs along with Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, and South Africa. Lagos has many important data centers including OADC where the Equiano cable landing station is located, MDXI Equinix, Rack Centre, and Medallion. And Lagos has no metro dark fibre. Hence your success in this market depends on good lit metro pricing and fast deployment.  An excellent metro provider is offering great deals on 100G wavelengths between Lagos' three most important telecom hotels: Rack Centre , OADC , and MDXI Equinix . Both volume and term discounts available. Delivery is two to three weeks. Equiano capacity can be bundled with the metro services. One stop shopping.  Service: EoDWDM. SLA: Unprotected. Topology: Ring. Site 1: Rack Centre. Site 2: OADC. Site 3: Equinix. Capacity: 3x 100G.  x-connect: Excluded. NRC: US$20,000. MRC: US$14,500 (1 Year). MRC: US$13,020 (2 Year). MRC: US$12,420 (3 Year). Interface: 100GE.