Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

 Dear Readers,  The International Telecom Union is hosting a meeting in Portugal in February to debate and discuss the resiliency of subsea cables. I think the debates will be lively. I encourage you to attend. I hope to be there myself. As I am not a member of any big international organization or company in the industry, it may be challenging to get attendance approval.  Regards,  Roderick. 

A point: Ashburn Equinix or 56 Marietta, Atlanta. Z point: Madrid Interxion 2. Term: 3 Years Bandwidth: 100G. Service: Layer 1. MRC: $5,990. NRC: $0.

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.