English (UK) English (UK)

This article is part two of the first article that looked closely at the subsea cable landscape across Africa. It concluded that nearly all the countries where economic progress and telecom liberalization is evidently gaining momentum are served by two or more subsea cables has created a vibrant landscape for Enterprise Network Services to flourish with a bouquet of connectivity options at competitive price for enterprise customers.

The first direct subsea -optic  system that will  SA to Brazil, and eventually to the US, is set for commercial launch in 2020, according to Seaborn Networks COO Andy Bax.

The independent submarine cable company, which operates the most direct subsea system between Brazil's Sao Paulo and New York in the US, last year announced plans to build a route that would be Africa's first direct connection to the US.

The first phase of the IOX (Indian Ocean Exchange) Submarine Cable system project, which will position Mauritius as a technology hub and significantly enhance the development of the country’s broadband infrastructure to support and drive the new digital economy, was launched on April 9th afternoon at the Le Labourdonnais Hotel Caudan Waterfront, in Port Louis.

Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Hong Kong), Ltd ("Telin Hong Kong"), a subsidiary of PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia International, ("Telin") has launched its most current Data Center called neuCentrIX HK-1 in Itech Tower 2, Hong Kong. The ceremony was remarked by the ribbon cutting done by Director of Carrier & International Business Telkom, Abdus Somad Arief and CEO Telin, Faizal R. Djoemadi on April 12th 2018.

In 1994, there were more telephone lines in New York City than there were in the whole of Africa. Over the next two decades, digital transformation picked up speed drastically.

Today, the continent is teeming with pioneers building "digital bridges" within and between villages, countries and continents, as well as connecting Africa to the global economy and research communities.

Yet many parts of Africa continue to play catch-up with the rest of the world in terms of the control and directness of subsea fibre optic connectivity.

According to IOX Cable, The first phase of the Indian Ocean Exchange (IOX) submarine cable system, connecting Mauritius and Rodrigues Islands to South Africa and India, has been officially launched in Port Louis. The IOX cable project launching ceremony was held at Labourdonnais Hotel, Caudan Waterfront on Monday.

San Francisco, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney, 4 April 2018 – A consortium including RTI Connectivity Pte. Ltd. (RTI-C), AARNet Pty Ltd (AARNet) and Google, together with Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), and NEC Corporation, announced today that the construction of the Japan-Guam-Australia Cable System (JGA) has officially commenced. The 9,500-kilometer undersea fiber optic cable system will deliver a design capacity of more than 36 terabits per second (Tbps) and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2019.

This is the 4th article to explore the fascinating world of subsea cables that continue to challenge the speed-limits of intercontinental optical transmission with newer advancements, greater programmability and volume production in optoelectronics along with more advanced optical fiber cables that maximize span of un-repeatered transmission. It can't be stressed more that the maze of subsea cables beneath the sea are fundamental to the global connectedness for every form of communication and the ubiquitous Internet for individuals, organizations and governments. With soaring demand primarily from content/cloud providers and new technology making economics attractive, new subsea cables will always be welcome. I started exploring the subsea cable landscape with a high level view of global picture, explored new trends with subsea cables and in the backdrop of 366 subsea cables and 1006 cable landing stations discussed - do we need more subsea cables. Thereafter I looked at the Indian market closely and explored the rapid developments unfolding with 20 subsea cables and 19 cable landing stations. Next I looked at continental Africa with 54 countries of which 37 countries has at least one submarine cable landing and explored the play of 24 primary subsea cables along and Eastern and Western Africa converging in South Africa that usher era of digital economy and the wider social upliftment to every country. In this article, I will take a closer look at the Middle East region that offers an interesting panorama of subsea cables and its regional uniqueness as tabulated below.

Eletronet, Brazil's national service provider, announced on Wednesday that it has selected Seaborn Networks and its international submarine fiber-optic cable system, Seabras-1, to provide Tier 1 Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) in Brazil. Seaborn's Seabras-1 solution also provides dedicated international capacity ensuring the most reliable customer experience while avoiding the problems associated with shared traffic that is often an issue for international IP in Brazil.

Aqua Comms DAC (“Aqua Comms”) recently announced that Hurricane Electric has activated one 100 Gigabit waves of high capacity connectivity between New York and Dublin on Aqua Comms’ America Europe Connect-1 (AEC-1) subsea cable system.  The provisioning of secure and reliable capacity on Aqua Comms’ next-generation undersea network will improve the speed, performance and resiliency of Hurricane Electric’s global Internet backbone, and consequently all its IP Transit customers’ networks.

According to VOCUS, the ASC cable laying is now underway. The ASC cable is being laid in two distinct sections using two cable laying ships of Alcatel Submarine Network(ASN) . Alcatel Submarine Network’s (ASN) cable ship Ile de Batz will lay the cable from near Christmas Island to Fremantle, near Perth in Western Australia. The route covers a distance of around 3,000km and travels through deep water for about 90 percent of the route. A sister ship, the ASN Ile de Ré is laying 1,600km of cable in shallow water between Singapore and Christmas Island.

IOX Cable and Angola Cables have recently announced the signing of a joint provisioning agreement aimed at developing and enhancing their respective network capabilities and services across the Americas, Africa, Europe and India. By partnering with Angola Cables, IOX is consolidating its position by extending its network to Europe, South America and North America for the benefit of its customers through cable systems operated by Angola Cables.

Africa is irrefutably one of the most important growth markets globally embracing digital transformation enabled by resurgent economic progress, Internet-literate youth, and growing appetite to assimilate technology led innovations. An easy to correlate index of economic progress is number of subsea cables that connect an African country. With 54 countries recognized by United Nations, Africa has 38 countries that have seashore and 16 that are land locked. Out of these 38 countries that have seashore, 37 countries have at least one submarine cable landing. The lone exception is Eritrea, considering Western Sahara is considered disputed territory.

This article is part of a series of interviews with leading cable project owners around the world  for Submarine Networks Projects 2017.  In this article, Winston Qiu, Senior Vice President at Pacific Light Data Communications shares his vision for the new Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN).

Despite the many subsea cables connecting Asia with the US, there are none which connect Hong Kong directly with the US. That is until now. Pacific Light Data Communications (PLDC) are currently in the process of laying the first direct cable – the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) – between these two terminals to offer latency which is up to 20 milliseconds shorter than existing cable projects.

REANNZ has selected Vodafone and Chorus to provide fibre backhaul services to connect its backbone national research and education network to the Hawaiki Submarine Cable Landing Station, located at Mangawhai Heads in Northland. 

REANNZ, on behalf of government, has a 25-year anchor tenancy contract on the Hawaiki telecommunications cable, to link New Zealand to Australia, Hawaii and mainland United States, with options to expand to several South Pacific islands.

Huawei Marine Networks

Submarine Networks World 2018

Subsea EMEA 2018

Latest Articles