At the Submarine Networks World 2019 event, there was a new brand from Africa: Botswana Fiber Networks (BoFiNet). Never aware of BoFiNet’s involvement in any submarine cable project, I was quite curiously and had an interview with Mr. Keabetswe Segole, Commercial Executive at BoFiNet. Then I got to understand BoFiNet has invested in WACS and EASSY subsea cables and is the operator which connects Botswana to global submarine networks. BoFiNet has co-built with Paratus the fiber network from WACS cable landing station in Swakopmund, Namibia to Botswana. And BoFiNet is co-building with Broadband Infraco the terrestrial fiber cable connecting Botswana and Johannesburg, South Africa.

Wall, NJ and Madrid, Spain – October 14, 2019 - NJFX, the only Cable Landing Station (CLS) colocation campus in the U.S offering Tier 3, carrier-neutral data center capabilities, and Telxius, the communications infrastructure company of the Telefónica Group, announce significant development at their Cable Landing Station (CLS) campuses. As a driver of collaboration among carriers, subsea cable operators, enterprises and cloud providers within its CLS ecosystem, NJFX marks the spot of the first-ever CLS to CLS terrestrial interconnection, which connects NJFX CLS in Wall, NJ to Telxius facilities at the CLS in Virginia Beach, VA. The NJFX ecosystem boom is driven in part by its strategic location 64 feet above sea level and Category 5 hurricane resistant CLS campus with access to three subsea cables today, increasing to a total of four subsea cables in 4Q2019 that will exceed capacity of 500 Terabits per second of transmission capacity. The Telxius communications campus at Virginia Beach provides direct access to the top two capacity subsea cables in the world, MAREA and BRUSA.

Asia is riding a wave of activity in submarine development. Hong Kong SAR alone will see six new ‘cable landings’ on its shores in the near future. There is also a raft of other cable developments in APAC, coincided with the emergence of new technologies and business models, all of which are facilitating increasing diversity of routes and improved latency.

According to Diario de Tenerife (Official Information of the Cabildo de Tenerife) and Radio Televisión Canaria (rtvc), the Cabildo de Tenerife (the Government of Tenerife, Canary Islands) and Google signed an memorandum on May 23^rd to explore the possibility of connecting Google's Equiano subsea cable to the island, to strengthen telecommunications connectivity between the Canary Islands, Europe and Africa. Tenerife intends to join Google's Equiano subsea cable project through Canalink. The document was signed by the president of the Island Corporation, Carlos Alonso; and the head of the development of the Google submarine cable network for Southern Europe and Africa, Chris George.

St Helena Government (SHG) announced on July 19 that it had issued a letter of intent to connect St Helena to Google's Equiano subsea cable project. This will provide the first fibre optic connectivity from St Helena to the outside world through both Europe and South Africa. 

The 4,700km Coral Sea Cable System under construction by Vocus, has achieved two major milestones, with the cable now installed at the landing sites at both Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

In the Solomon Islands on Monday 15 July 2019, a ceremony featuring a symbolic handover of a ‘golden buoy’ formally marked the beginning of work to lay the cable between Honiara and Sydney.

RTI and GTA announced that the management teams of RTI and GTA have entered into a joint venture and are constructing the Gateway Network Connections, LLC (GNC) facility that will serve as Guam’s first combined neutral Cable Landing Station (CLS) and Data Center (DC). GNC is a new build and will be located adjacent to GTA’s existing Piti-I CLS. JGA North, JGA South, HK-G, SEA-US and SxS will interconnect with each other at GNC’s neutral facility, and GTA’s network across Guam will allow for seamless connectivity between GNC and other active cables landed on Guam.

Vocus has announced its Australian Singapore Cable (ASC) system was now operating with an end-to-end total capacity of 60 terabits per second (Tbps) – 50% more capacity than it launched with less than 10 months ago. In addition to the increased end-to-end capacity, the ASC’s Singapore to Indonesia connection now has a capacity of up to 44Tbps and its Perth to Indonesia connection now has a capacity of up to 33Tbps.

Google Argentina and Antel Uruguay have announced to extend the Tannat subsea cable to the nearby coastal city of Las Toninas in the Buenos Aires province, Argentina. And the Tannat extension is expected to be be ready for service in August 2020. The 2000km Brazil-Uruguay Tannat subsea cable has been operational since mid-2018, connecting Santos, Brazil, to Maldonado, Uruguay.

Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) has introduced an innovative design approach, SDM1 by ASN, Spatial Division Multiplexing, optimizing cost per bit. This disruptive solution is an alternative to the traditional design philosophy status quo. The SDM1 by ASN is revolutionizing the traditional submarine network design: "High power, High OSNR, High Effective Area (Aeff) fibre" by using "Low Power, Low OSNR, Low Aeff Fibre and more fibre pairs".

MainOne has announced an Open Access metro fiber infrastructure project in two states of Nigeria, with the support from Facebook. The infrastructure collaboration is part of Facebook’s efforts to connect more people to broadband internet. As part of this open access project, MainOne is building and operating approximately 750 km terrestrial fiber infrastructure in Edo and Ogun States, two of Nigeria’s fastest growing states.

MainOne Cable Company signed supply contract with TE SubCom in September 2018 to extend the MainOne submarine cable system with two additional branches connecting Senegal (Dakar) and Cote D’Ivoire (Abidjan). SubCom will light the new branches with Ciena’s transmission equipment, which enables this flexibility and higher capacity. It is also an industry first for the deployment of undersea spectrum-sharing in Africa.

Telecoms environment across the Continent of Africa, especially the domain of Terrestrial Fiber Networks is a short-term Goldmine for most stakeholders, but a long-term nightmare for the stakeholders that really matter – the People / Users.

You would think that Telecom Project Costs across Africa should fall each year, as technologies mature, developed market networks reach scale, equipment’s are optimized, rapid obsolescence and large market dynamics of Africa come into play , right ?. Wrong.

Google followed by Facebook are the behemoths of submarine cables with global investments in 22 cable systems over the last 10 years. It seems, their submarine cable investments will continue unabated for the foreseeable future. Expectedly hence, they are also the key driving force for technology innovations in wet plat and dry plant leading to many firsts in subsea data transmission. In parallel they are developing captive hyperscale datacenters in developed markets and pursuing in country presence in emerging markets in collaboration and co-investment with local providers. The objective evidently is to accelerate availability of affordable broadband. For Africa, it includes Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria, where they have already ventured. In doing so they bring together learnings from scaling global infrastructure with local provider’s knowledge of the market landscape to develop new working models with open infrastructure.

Cisco and Acacia Communications announced on Tuesday they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Cisco has agreed to acquire Acacia. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco has agreed to acquire Acacia for $70.00 per share in cash, or for approximately $2.6 billion on a fully diluted basis, net of cash and marketable securities.

Google has been obviously the largest owner and investor in submarine cable networks globally. Upon announcing its latest investment of the private Equiano subsea cable system, Google has invested in 14 subsea cable systems, with approximately 112,000km cable length in a total. Between 2016 and 2018, Google invested US$47 billion in capex to improve Google Could infrastructure which includes 134 points of presence (PoP) and 14 subsea cable investments globally.