NEC Corporation and its subsidiary OCC Corporation announced today that they have completed full qualification of subsea repeaters and optical cable containing up to 20 fiber pairs (40 fibers). This is a 25% improvement in fiber count over 16 fiber pair systems previously built by NEC. This development allows cable owners worldwide to construct subsea telecom cables capable of the highest traffic capacity, while optimizing the cost per bit of the wet plant.

This article is part-two of the previous article – Mumbai-Chennai-Singapore, the Superhot Submarine Superhighway. It completes the narrative on new submarine cables to be unveiled in the course of 2020 that are set to land in India. Designating it part-two made sense as Mumbai-Chennai-Singapore initiatives is few steps ahead of Mumbai-Marseilles with respect to new submarine cables.

According to Inidan news, Reliance Jio Infocomm will build two new submarine cable systems connecting Singapore and Europe, the India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) connecting Mumbai and Chennai, and the India-Europe-Xpress (IEX) connecting Mumbai to Europe. The IAX and IEX cables will provide direct connectivity to the top content hubs worldwide, and the deployment is set to boost India’s data availability.

According to the French National Research Institue (IRD), scientists have for the first time shown that it is possible to detect the propagation of seismic waves on the seafloor using submarine telecommunications optical fiber cables. According to their research, this existing infrastructure could be used to detect earthquakes, as well as swell and underwater noise. The existing submarine cables will offer potential as billions of seismic sensors.

Does it look impudent marketing to designate the 5500 kms Mumbai-Chennai-Singapore subsea route as superhot submarine superhighway! Its relevance as standalone subsea route from the international gateways of global connectivity in north-west and south-east coast of India to APAC business hub of Singapore is as important as segment of the larger SEA-ME-WE Eurasian subsea corridor.

According to telecompaper, Telebras will no longer participate in the EllaLink submarine cable project linking Brazil and Europe for lack of resources, Telebras said in a statement to the Brazilian stock market regulator. In the end of 2018, Telebras exited as a shareholder of EllaLink by swapping its equity interest into irrevocable rights of use (IRU) under a share swap agreement. And now, Telebras is expecting to terminate its contractual rights in the EllaLink cable system. The withdrawal of Telebras won't have significant impact on the EllaLink project.

The owners of the Seabras-1 cable conneting New York and São Paulo, Seabras 1 Bermuda Ltd (“Seabras Bermuda”) and Seabras 1 USA LLC (“Seabras US” and, together with Seabras Bermuda, the “Companies”), filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (the “Filings”) in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on December 22, 2019, saying that an underwhelming number of customer contracts rendered it unable to make payments on its $150 million in secured debt obligations. Seaborn Networks, the operator of the Seabras-1 cable system, is not part of the Filings and will continue to be the operator of the Seabras-1 cable system throughout the Filings process.

NTT Ltd announced on December 13, 2019 that it will commence the construction of the MIST submarine cable system, a 12 fiber-pair and 240Tbps large-capacity submarine cable conneting Singapore, Myanmar and India (Mumbai and Chennai). Orient Link Pte. Ltd. (Orient Link), a strategic joint venture of NTT, JICT and WEN Capital, will undertake the construction of MIST cable system. The cost of the MIST cable system is approximately USD400million. NTT aims to link its large-scale data centers in Singapore, Myanmar and India with the MIST cable system.

The Coral Sea Cable System (CS²) connects both Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Solomon Islands to the major East Coast Internet Hub at Sydney, Australia. The Coral Sea Cable System (CS²) consists of 4 fibre pairs, with 2 fibre pairs from Sydney to Port Moresby and Honiara, respective capital cities of PNG and the Solomon Islands, yielding up to 20Tbps to each of the South Pacific countries. 

Africa may be a growing hub of digital innovation, particularly noticeable in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi and Lagos – with companies in these metropolitan areas taking advantage of high-speed fibre connections to embrace the cloud and develop new business models and processes.  These leading-edge companies are connecting with their peers more-and-more at a regional and global level.

Vocus has celebrated the successful completion of the Coral Sea Cable System for the Australian Government. After final testing, the 4,700 km Coral Sea Cable connecting Sydney, Honiara and Port Moresby, and the 730 km Solomon Islands Domestic Network, were accepted by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, a month earlier than planned.

Hawaiki Submarine Cable LP signed recently a multi-million dollar contract with SCCI, providing SCCI with a turn-key solution to connect New Caledonia to Hawaiki, including a subsea branch to the capital city of Noumea and significant capacity on the transpacific cable. Hawaiki cable's new branch to New Caledonia has been named ‘Tomoo’.

PEACE has announced the signing of the Landing Party Agreement for its Kenya landing during Africa Com 2019, in Cape Town, South Africa. The Landing Party Agreement (LPA) was signed on 5 September 2019, with Liquid Telecom and Africa Data Centre. PEACE and Liquid Telecom have also achieved an initial deal on PEACE Kenya route connectivity.

MainOne announced in this week that its the MainOne cable branch to Cote d’Ivoire is in service and is ready to welcome its first customers. MainOne cable landed at the Grand Bassam beach in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire in early October. The MainOne submarine cable is connected to the newly constructed MainOne data centre in Abidjan, purposely built alongside the Abidjan cable landing station. The MainOne data centre in Abidjan is a Tier III-compliant datacenter in Côte d'Ivoire, provides co-location spaces for customers to easily consolidate their IT infrastructure while gaining access to fully redundant power, cooling, operator-level security and fire prevention facilities.

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.