Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

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...

1. Chennai/Singapore; 100G; $25K Per Month. One wavelength left. 2. LS1/Abidjan; WACS; 100G; $35K a Month. 2x 100Gs available. 3. LS1/OADC; Equiano; 100G; $21K a Wave. 5x 100Gs available. 4. SG3/TY2; ADC; 100G; $15K MRC. One wave available.

The coral sea 2 subsea fibre optic branching unit for the Solomon Islands. I believe in the beginning these units were purely passive. They divided the fibre pairs into two or more paths. But more modern versions do optical switching of wavelengths. This BU is being stored aboard an Alcatel cable ship. Optical switching allows for more bandwidth efficiency as capacity can be flexibly allocated between branches. The older systems led to stranded capacity because usage was rarely equal across fibre pairs and branches. 

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 ...

 ADC was officially open for business November 8th, 2024 with an inauguration ceremony this past December 18th. The eight fibre pair cable is a standard coherent optics subsea network connecting Vietnam, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. The design capacity is 180 Tbps, which makes it currently the highest capacity to serve the critical Southeast Asia Triangle of Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  Industry insides are extremely excited because there has been a persistent Southeast Asia bandwidth shortage due to the growth in the region's Internet traffic. The shortage has been compounded by chronic and long lasting outages on cables like APG and Vietnam cable branches. APG has been down twelve months out of the last 24. It is a dismal record. Many of the older cables have only a few terabits throughput representing drops in the proverbial bucket.  NEC built the system which should relieve security concerns about the involvement of Chinese carri...

Many have been wondering why the 2Africa segment from Kenya to Marseille via the Red Sea remains unfinished. It turns out that the Houthi rebels refuse to bless the project or guarantee the safety of any cable ship laying 2Africa through the Red Sea. The Houthis did permit the AAE1 repair because the cable lands in Yemen and hence the repair was in their self interest. See the AAE1 map below. But 2Africa does not land in Yemen, hence no cooperation. As we all know, a Houthi missile hit the Rubymar last year in the Red Sea, crew dropped anchor and then abandonned ship. But the ship drifted 31 kilometers dragging its anchor behind it. Seacom, AAE1, and Eassy were all damaged. This could be a big problem going forward. Lots of cables including SWM6, Blue-Raman and others are supposed to snake up the Red Sea either to Egypt or Saudi Arabia/Jordan/Israel. This is a network planning nightmare of first rank. The current capacity shortages on many global routes are likely to get a lot worse be...