So Subpartners and Superloop are busily progressing the Indigo cable system project and there has been tremendous progress over recent weeks. A huge milestone was reached in mid July with Alcatel's Ile De Brehat cable laying ship departing Calais in France with over 7000km of cable and repeaters destined for an area near Christmas Island via Singapore. From there it will begin laying the cable in August 2018 down the Western Australian coast to Perth before continuing through to Sydney!

Virginia Beach is now a hot site for submarine cable landing, hosting MAREA, BRUSA, SAEx1 and Dunant submarine cable systems.

Microsoft and Facebook partnering with Telxius landed their 160Tbps MAREA cable system at the Virginia Beach Cable Landing Station (CLS) site at 1900 Corporate Landing Parkway in Virginia Beach.

In the latest years Marseille has become one of the key Mediterranean data hubs. The exponential increase in demand for data in Africa, Middle East and Asia has attracted data center providers and operators to establish this area as one of their key connectivity hubs for all the traffic into and out of the European region.

MAREA, the highest capacity submarine cable to ever cross the Atlantic, lands in the north of Spain (Bilbao) and connects to the most important European backbones reaching the most relevant connectivity hubs including Marseille.

The Management Committee of the AAE-1 Consortium, made up of 19 global telecommunications operators, has appointed Giuseppe Sini, Head of Retelit International Business Unit, as the Vice Chairman of the AAE-1 Management Committee. The Retelit manager chaired the recently held Management Committee Meeting held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The cable laying phase of the Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) system is complete, with the final splice having been completed south-east of Singapore.

Vocus Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Russell recognised the significance of the milestone.

Hawaiki Submarine Cable has selected Peak 10 + ViaWest (now Flexential) Brookwood data center in Hillsboro, Oregon as its US PoP (point of presence) and terminal station to install the SLTE of Hawaiki cable system. The Hawaiki cable stretchs more than 14,000 km across the Pacific Ocean and is the first carrier-neutral, low-latency, fiber-optic connection between the continental U.S., Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and American Samoa, with system capacity of 43.8 Tbps. The New Cross Pacific (NCP) cable system is also terminated at the Brookwood data center.

Auckland, New Zealand - 20 July 2018: Independent telecommunications challenger, Hawaiki Submarine Cable LP today commenced commercial operations for its 15,000 km fibre optic deep-sea cable linking Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific and United States.

The $US300 million Hawaiki Submarine Cable System represents a new dawn for digital communications in the region, delivering 43 terabits of additional capacity - several times the current levels of Australia and New Zealand combined - on a fully diverse subsea route.

Telecom Argentina S.A. ("Telecom Argentina")  and Seaborn Networks ("Seaborn") announced today that the ARBR submarine cable system between Argentina and Brazil (ARBR") will be landing in Telecom Argentina's cable landing station in Las Toninas, Argentina. In addition, Telecom Argentina shall provide ARBR with dark fiber on a backhaul route between Las Toninas and Buenos Aires, as well as point of presence (POP) space in Buenos Aires.

EATONTOWN, N.J., July 17, 2018 – TE SubCom, a TE Connectivity Ltd. company and an industry pioneer in undersea communications technology, today announced that Google has selected the company as the supplier of its Dunant submarine cable system. The four-fiber pair cable system will span over 6,400km and will connect the East Coast of the United States to Europe. The cable will add dedicated capacity to Google’s global network and will enable interconnection to other subsea infrastructure in the region.

According to ProPakistani and China Xinhua News, the Pak-China Optical Fiber Cable (Pak-China OFC), which connects Pakistan with China through Khunjerab, was put into service on Friday, July 13, 2018. The Pak-China cable will be jointly operated and maintained by Special Communication Organization of Pakistan and China Telecom. China Telecom and SCO have sucessfully completed the acceptance and commission test of the cross-border system. 

Metro Optic, Crosslake Fibre, and Utilities Kingston announced on Thursday their plans to build a new fibre-optic cable system from Montréal to Toronto. The project will be developed by Maple Leaf Fibre Ltd., a joint venture of two leading independent Canadian providers of fibre optic network capacity, Crosslake Fibre ULC based in Toronto, Ontario and Metro Optic based in Montréal, Quebec. The Maple Leaf Fibre cable system will have a terrestrial segment between Montréal, Ottawa, and Kingston, and a submarine segment through Lake Ontario between Kingston and downtown Toronto.

A project from Angola Cables could soon start connecting the BRICS bloc countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

"Angola Cables' network, including the cable between Brazil and Angola, would allow an immediate connection of the BRICS. In fact, we are at this moment talking to the South African part to promote the connectivity," António Nunes, CEO of the Angolan telecom group, told BNamericas in an exclusive interview.

New Delhi, India and Tokyo, Japan, July 12, 2018 – Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a Government of India Enterprise, and NEC Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. (NECTI) announced today that a purchase order has been placed by BSNL for NECTI to design, engineer, supply, install, test and implement an optical submarine cable system connecting Chennai and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands (A&N Islands). NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701), the parent company of NECTI, will manufacture the optical submarine cable and provide technical assistance during the turnkey implementation.

China Mobile International (CMI) announced that it will build the BtoBE submarine cable connecting the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area, and Singapore. Transmission efficiency between globally important cities in the Pacific Rim will be further improved by the BtoBE submarine cable, which will link the two large-scale bay areas of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay and San Francisco Bay.

Tokyo, 9 July, 2018 – The Bay to Bay Express Cable System (BtoBE) consortium, composed of China Mobile International, Facebook and Amazon Web Services, signed an agreement with NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE:6701) to build a high performance submarine cable connecting Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States.

This JUPITER cable system overview is prepared according to the information released by JUPITER Consortium in their application for cable landing license to FCC. JUPITER cable system will have a total length of 14,557 kilometers and consist of three main segments, main trunk with 5 fiber pairs, Philippines branch with 2 fiber pairs and  Oregon branch with 2 fiber pairs. Each fiber pair will have a total design capacity of 12 Tbps per fiber pair, for a total of 60 Tbps for the JUPITER cable system as a whole.