Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

The consortium has been coy regarding its plan to bypass the Red Sea. My initial guess was that SMW6's main trunk would land in Oman and head across the Saudi Arabian desert to Egypt. I know more now. The main trunk will land in Bahrain and Kuwait and then go overland to Jeddah. If you view the map, you can see there is a highway making an almost straight line from Bahrain via Riyadh to Jeddah. This approach makes sense because it uses an existing right of way and hence sharply reduces deployment costs. I don't know whether existing terrestrial SA fibre was used or new stuff blown through an empty conduit. Any Saudi terrestrial capacity will be very expensive although pricing may have been tempered by the desire to get the consortium to adopt the route as part of the main trunk. It will be interesting to see if Blue-Raman, Africa-1, 2Africa, and other stalled projects follow a similar path. Such an outcome would be upsetting for many Middle Eastern in the vicinity of the Red Se...

The LEO satellite business model is one of the most interesting topics in telecommunications today. LEO satellites are not a 'new technology'. It is really just a new approach to providing Internet access without any intellectual or patent moat to prevent the entry of new competitors. There could be a know how moat, but the number of LEO satellite networks entering the market over the next 5 year suggests it is very shallow. LEO satellites provide Last Mile access using low Earth orbits ranging from 300 kilometers (180 US miles) to 2,000 kilometers (1200 miles). Each bird as they are affectionately called in the industry takes only 90 to 120 minutes to complete an orbit. Their orbits can take a variety of shapes. For example, a LEO orbit could be elliptical in order to achieve a closer approach to the Earth at some points along the path for more detailed image or data collection. Or the LEO could fly longitudinally from North Pole to South Pole and back again. Hence LEO satelli...

Both Indigo West and SJC are experiencing outages. I suggest trying ADC as non-Chinese capacity is available on favorable terms for three year contracts. TATA and TELIN are good choices. I can help with either of them. For Chinese capacity, I believe China Unicom has some very aggressive deals as well. Contact Omer Tariq in London or Georgio Garguillo in Milano.  SJC went live in 2013. Its design capacity is 28 Tbps and the cable has six fibre pairs. It connects mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, and Thailand. Both Sub.com and NEC built the system. The SJC consortium is large and includes China Telecom, China Mobile International, KDDI, Taiwan PTT, Singtel, TOT, Google, and a subsidiary of the Brunei PTT. 

***No European terrestrial routes are more subject to outages than those linking EU nations to Turkey via Bulgaria. Many so-called diverse routes share a common pinch point, namely the same conduit system alongside a Bulgarian road that goes to the Turkish border. Rumor has it that this conduit system was not properly permitted and hence lacks proper legal protection. Construction-caused outages are rampant on the Bulgarian side of the border. Outages peak in the summer.  ***Fully diverse diverse routes linking Sofia Telepoint to Mednautilus, Istanbul. Several border crossings. Three year 100G wave MRC: 6500€. No use of oil or gas pipelines. Two fully diverse 100G waves are 12K Euros.

Outage started 36 hours ago. No information available other than customers are reporting no data passing their links. If you need Australia connected to Singapore, it is possible to create a protect path via Guam. But it will not be cheap.

1. Capacity shortages will develop within 2 years because Equiano and 2Africa are insufficient given the vast number of countries they serve. Only South Africa and Nigeria have adequate capacity. But for many countries 2Africa is the only truly modern and reliable system with good long haul pricing and reasonable cross connect fees. Now 2Africa is 180 Tbps, but serves at least 30 countries in total. Even if we exclude the Pearls component, we are looking at Egypt, Italy, France, Portugal, UK, Sudan, Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, Seychelles, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, South Africa, Angola, the two Congos, Gabon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Senegal, Togo, and Senegal. I count 27 in the core African network. Divide by 180/27=6.7 Tbps. Capacity shortages are almost guaranteed particularly given some migration from the older, less reliable systems with their high cross connect charges to 2Africa and Equiano. One factor that may alleviate stress on the telecom...

The Pacific and Southeast Asia have two major telecom hubs: Tokyo and Singapore. Tokyo's status reflects its importance as the capital of one of Asia's largest economies with huge trade and financial flows with the United States as well as a defense treaty. Tokyo dominates Japan like Paris does France. Singapore's emergence reflects Hong Kong's downfall due to the Chinese government's failure to honor its commitment to HK autonomy. China requires any political candidate for HK office to be approved by it. Hence every HK politician is de facto a Beijing puppet. Secondly, China's security laws allow the arrest of anyone criticizing the Chinese government. The collapse of HK's rule of law is illustrated by numerous arrests of anyone peacefully opposing the government. You can go to jail for wearing a T-shirt advocating HK independence. In contrast, Singapore is neutral in the geopolitical war between the US and China and its judges are independen...