Telecom Egypt announced on May 10, 2018 that its Board of Directors approved two strategic decisions to increase its return on investment, and provide the liquidity to facilitate the implementation of its business plan.

RETN recently announced the completion of an upgrade of its TRANSKZ Europe-Asia terrestrial route running through Kazakhstan. Due to the recent upgrade to 100G, RETN became the only European provider to deliver a fully owned high-speed terrestrial connectivity solution between key markets in Europe and Asia (Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul). 

EllaLink announced on Monday receipt of an Intent to Award for a €25 million contract with GÉANT and RedCLARA on behalf of the BELLA Consortium. This award is for a Capacity Purchase on the EllaLink submarine cable, a new state-of-the-art transatlantic system. The EllaLink cable system, providing 72 terabits of telecoms capacity between Spain, Portugal and Brazil, will be ready for service in 2020.

Angola Cables announced at ITW 2018 that it can now offer its customers customized amounts of capacity on the MONET subsea cable system with Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme Spectrum Sharing capability. Angola Cables can reliably and securely offer highly differentiated virtual fiber pairs, which are dedicated and upgradeable portions of overall optical spectrum, to end-users over a shared physical fiber pair.

Seaborn Networks announced on Saturday the appointment of David Zimmer as Seaborn's Chief Sales Officer. As Seaborn's new CSO, Dave will be responsible for all of Seaborn's direct sales, channel strategies and inside sales. Dave is also being added to Seaborn's board of directors.

The South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL) is an ambitious 6,000-km submarine cable system that will connect Kribi, Cameroon with Fortaleza, Brazil. Scheduled for completion by Q3, 2018, SAIL brings together some major names in an ocean-spanning partnership designed to boost connectivity and economic activity across two continents. David Nkoto Emane, General Manager of Cameroon Telecom (CAMTEL), believes that the scheme’s main challenges can be overcome with the right mindset, strategies, and technologies.

Available Capacity Entitlement:

Multiple 100Gbps wavelengths on following segments of SJC cable system are available

• China (Shantou CLS) to Japan (Chikura CLS)    
• China  (Shantou CLS) to Hong Kong (Mega-I PoP) 
• Hong Kong (Mega-I PoP) to Japan (Chikura CLS)
• Entitlement/IRU on other segments are subject to further confirmation.

Xtera®, the system supplierfor the ARBR project, announces today that Seaborn Networks ("Seaborn"), a leading developer-owner-operator of submarine fiber optic cable systems, has selected its C+L band design for the system between São Paulo and Buenos Aires. ARBR utilizes the advanced technology of Xtera in order to meet the growing capacity requirements of Internet Content Providers on this crucial route. The ARBR system will allow for direct onward connectivity to New York, via Seaborn's Seabras-1 system, thereby providing a lower latency route between the commercial and financial centers of Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and New York.   

Telegeography reported there are 366 subsea cables with 1006 cable landing stations globally and this includes subsea cables that are currently active, under construction, or expected to be fully-funded by the end of 2020. A market survey indicates nearly 30 cables are under construction and new announcements would be in addition to it. Undeniably, that’s quite impressive market landscape of subsea cables.

According to India.com, Bharti Airtel said on Tuesday it has acquired India leg of Gulf Bridge International (GBI) submarine cable which will boost its data carrying capacity. In addition to GBI cable, Airtel s existing global network consists of Unity, IMEWE, EIG, SMW4 and MENA submarine cables. Back to May 2016, Airtel and GBI have announced a strategic partnership which will increase Airtel's direct reach to multiple new countries in the Middle East and will offer GBI’s partners better connectivity.

The Monet consortium, including Algar Telecom, Angola Cables, Antel, Google and TE SubCom, has announced that the Monet Cable System (Monet) is now ready for service with commercial traffic due to begin shortly. The Monet Cable System spans 10,556km，connects Florida to Brazil，provides approximately 64Tbps of capacity and low latency solutions.

According to Zayo news press, New Cross Pacific (NCP) US Backhaul group, comprised of Chunghwa Telecom, KT Corporation, China Telecom, China Mobile International and China Unicom, has selected Zayo Group for a private dedicated network (PDN), to diversely backhaul traffic from its U.S. landing station across the western United States.