This article takes a closer look at 15 submarine cables facing challenges, that have either prevented them from reaching CIF or the implementation not reaching RFS or operational cables whose mainstream acceptance or economic lifespan is threatened by under-utilization.

According to Djibouti Telecom and Ecofin Agency, Kenya plans to invest $59 million to increase its data capabilities. This fund will be used to deploy an extension of the Djibouti Africa Regional Express (DARE1). Telkom Kenya has participated in the DARE1 consortium as Landing Party in Kenya.

DARE1 consortium comprising Djibouti Telecom, Somtel and Telkom Kenya and its supplier SubCom announced on Wednesday that all manufacturing aspects for the Djibouti Africa Regional Express 1 (DARE1) submarine cable system are complete. The DARE1 cable system includes three branch units off a three fiber-pair trunk, where each pair has a capacity of 40 channels at 300 Gbps.

JGA South consortium comprising AARNet, Google and RTI announced that the Japan-Guam-Australia South subsea cable system (JGA-South) landed at Narrabeen Beach in Sydney on November 27, 2019. AARNet is the Sydney landing party for JGA South, responsible for the cable landing station facilities, shore end work, permits in Sydney. JGA South is on-track to be completed and ready for service by March 2020.

SUB.CO recently announced to build the Oman Australia Cable (OAC) that will directly connect Muscat, Oman to Perth, Australia. SUB.CO has partnered with Omantel on the OAC project and selected Subcom as the turn key supplier. 

Acquisition, ownership and operation of Submarine Fiber Pair is the ultimate futureproof solution for scalable transoceanic connectivity, with design capacity of at least 12T/FP and goes up to 20T/FP, and even beyond. Interestingly that’s more than the total capacity of most of the consortium cables that land in India. Till date Submarine Fiber Pair acquisition was feasible only for the elites, the big-4 OTTs and Reliance Jio.

Angola Cables and Nokia announced at AfricaCom 2019 that they have collaborated to provide a direct optical connection between Africa and North America, by optically interconnecting MONET and South Atlantic Cable System (SACS). And the fiber-optic routing between Sangano in Angola and Boca Raton, Miami in the USA has completed final acceptance trial, with RTD of 123.4ms.

Ciena, Internet2, and Juniper Networks confirmed last successfully passing live traffic over a 1,367-mile (2200km) circuit using a single 400 gigabit Ethernet link between Chicago and Denver, the first such occurrence for an advanced research and education (R&E) network. The live traffic ran cleanly during a trial between StarLight in Chicago and SCinet at the SC Conference in Denver this week on the 400 gigabit Ethernet link connecting two Juniper PTX 10003 core routers. 

AT&T announced last week the activation the first 400G optical connection between Dallas and Atlanta. This 400G  optical connection is not a trial, it is carrying live internet traffic across AT&T's network for their customers. AT&T believes the 400G optical connection is a first in the industry, which offers a significant upgrade to their production network, built on flexible, low-cost white box hardware. The 400G Dallas/Atlanta facility was deployed on an SDN-enabled Ultra Long Haul (ULH) system from Ciena, with 400G pluggable transceivers from InnoLight and white box was supplied by UfiSpace.

Google announced Curie's ready for service on November 15, 2019. According to Google's announcement, Curie cable is 10,500 kilometers long, running from the United States to Chile. And Google is adding the first Curie branch into Panama, to be supplied by SubCom as well. Curie cable system is equipped with four fiber pairs, each of 18 Tbps, delivering 72 Tbps of much needed bandwidth to South America. Curie landed in Valparaiso, Chile last April, and was the first subsea cable to connect to Chile in 19 years. 

SMW5 consortium and Ciena completed a significant upgrade to the SEA-ME-WE 5 submarine cable system in August 2019, by deploying Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme which features the 6500 Packet-Optical platform. The upgrade increased SMW5 cable system design capacity to 38Tbps, and reduced 100G unit cost by 70%. After the upgrade, SMW5 cable system offers hybrid 100G/200G waves, and is able to increase the capacity per wave up to 300Gbps. 

Ciena announced recently the completion of IMEWE upgrade, deploying Ciena’s coherent optical solutions and automation software to address network capacity requirements in the region. IMEWE cable system is using Ciena’s WaveLogic Ai technology to deploy 200G per wave on the majority of the IMEWE digital line section. Leveraging leading edge technologies, Ciena’s solutions provide IMEWE with a network capable of delivering immediate capacity upgrades while providing a foundation for continued growth. 

Orange announced at AfricaCom the construction of a new international backbone network in West Africa. This infrastructure will be built around a terrestrial fibre optic network coupled with submarine cables and will benefit from centralized supervision. This multi-regional West African network will connect to the rest of the world through various submarine cables and will link up all the main capital cities in the region: Dakar, Bamako, Abidjan, Accra, Lagos…

Liquid Telecom announced on Wednesday the launch of the fastest direct land-based fibre link connecting East to West Africa. This breakthrough coast-to-coast digital corridor follows the completion of Liquid Telecom’s new high-capacity fibre link running 2,600-kilometre (km) across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Liquid Telecom continues expanding its pan-African terrestrial fibre network rapidly.

This article aims to take a closer look at a bunch of subsea routes with potential for new submarine cables where, response to the question - why should someone build a submarine cable on this subsea route, leads to logical conversation, if not winning argument. It gains relevance in the backdrop of high fiber count cables shifting market focus from Wavelength ownership to Fiber Pair (FP) ownership. Further this shift in subsea connectivity paradigm is set go beyond OTT play to wider provider community led by forthcoming demonetization of FP economics.

The EllaLink Group and Telxius recently announced that they have signed a collaboration agreement for international subsea capacity and terrestrial connectivity in Latin America, including cable landing facilities in Fortaleza, Brazil. The complementary infrastructure owned by EllaLink and Telxius will enable European traffic to reach Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and other key cities in Brazil and across Latin America.