Huawei Marine recently announced that it will partner with CTR (Comunicación y Telefonía Rural S.A.) to deploy the Fiber Optic Austral (FOA), the southernmost submarine cable in the world, to connect three regions in southern Chile. The FOA cable project is dedicated to improving the connectivity of residents, businesses and regional governments, to improve education, health care, agriculture, and the tourism industry and stimulate e-commerce initiatives in Chile.

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.

The members of the Southeast Asia – Japan 2  consortium (SJC2 consortium) signed an agreement with NEC Corporation on March 15 to build a high performance submarine cable connecting Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, Korea and Japan. Ms Linette Lee, Director, Submarine Cable Investments at Singtel's Carrier Services, International Business Unit, Group Enterprise, acts as the Chairperson of the SJC2 consortium. 

NEC Corporation  announced on Thursday that it has signed an agreement with the Southeast Asia–Japan 2 consortium (SJC2 consortium) to build a high performance submarine cable connecting Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, Korea and Japan. SJC2 consortium comprises of China Mobile International (CMI), Chuan Wei, Chunghwa Telecom, Facebook, KDDI, Singtel, SK Broadband and VNPT.

Infinera announced on Monday the newest optical engine ICE5, the industry’s first 2.4 terabits per second (Tb/s) optical engine and the latest addition to the company’s family of Infinite Capacity Engines. ICE5 features:

• Industry’s first 2.4 Tb/s optical engine
• Optimized for data center interconnect and fiber-deep architectures
• 100 to 600 Gb/s per wavelength capacity
• Designed for 40+ Tb/s on a single fiber within a fraction of a data center rack
• Scale bandwidth on demand with Instant Network

HGC and OTEGLOBE have joined forces to provide a world-class Asia-Europe connectivity solution via both companies' extensive networks and data services, including HGC's and OTEGLOBE's unique backbones in Asia and Europe respectively as well as the new Asia-Africa-Europe-1 (AAE-1) cable, where OTEGLOBE is a founding member and landing party. The two companies' networks have been interconnected at OTEGLOBE's points of presence (PoPs) in Frankfurt and HGC's PoPs in Singapore, while other landing PoPs in other major Asian cities including Hong Kong will be added in the future. OTEGLOBE and HGC signed an agreement on 15 May 2017 in Chicago, during the "International Telecoms Week" Meeting.

OTEGLOBE announced on Monday high performance according to its 2017 financial results. In 2017 OTEGLOBE recorded a significant 15% increase in EBIDTA, and EBITDA margin increased to 5,5% from 4,7% in 2016.  International customers contributed 80% of its 2017 revenues. OTEGLOBE is the landing party in Greece for the Asia-Africa-Europe-1 (ΑΑΕ-1) submarine cable system which was set in full commercial operation in December 2017.  OTEGLOBE reached an agreement with HGC in May 2017, joining forces to provide Eurasia connectivity solutions via AAE-1 and capitalizing on its investment in AAE-1 cable. The economic benefits of AAE-1 operation was recorded in 2017. OTEGLOBE is expected to increase revenue significantly from AAE-1 in the future. 

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.

PCCW Global announced on Monday that it had agreed with Mauritius Telecom to construct and maintain a high speed submarine cable connecting the Indian Ocean Islands of Rodrigues and Mauritius, the Mauritius and Rodrigues Submarine Cable System (MARS). Huawei Marine is the contractor to supply the MARS cable system. PCCW Global will manage operation for the cable. Once the MARS cable system is live in 2019, it will vastly improve connectivity for Rodrigues.

There are now three leading telecom operators in Myanmar, i.e., MPT, Telenor Myanmar, Ooredoo Myanmar.  In 2018, telecom market in Myanmar is going to enter a new era. Two new telecom operators, MyTel & Ananda, announced to offer 4G services in Myanmar. MyTel & Ananda is going to change games for telecom market in Myanmar.

Angola Cables, a multinational telecoms company engaged in the operation and commercialization of transmission capacity and IP transit via subsea cables,  recently announced that U.S.-based, FiberLight, LLC will provide backhaul connectivity in the U.S., starting with the Miami, Florida region and later expanding to other locations.  This partnership will enable the delivery of Monet derived services to a wider range of clients and markets.

The majority of people around the world, including George Clooney in “Gravity” believe that the Internet’s connectivity is provided by satellite communications. Not so, I hear the likes of the content providers such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, as well as all the telecommunications companies say. For the moment, they are correct in that about 99.5% of our international data and voice connectivity is provided over submarine fibre cables which cross-cross the world.  The global submarine network is comprised of an estimated 213 independent fibre cable systems totalling c 550,000 miles (900,000 km) of fibre.  Each year sees another 20-30 submarine cables systems being built to augment or replace the existing cables, provide additional diversity and connectivity enabling more capacity for the global Internet.

According to Angola Cables, the installation of the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) is nearing completion.   The SACS is the first direct link between Africa and South America, spans 6 300km linking Luanda, Angola, and Fortaleza, Brazil, with a leg connecting the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha as well. SACS is designed to offer a capacity of 40Tbps between South America and Africa.

Ciena, Ericsson and Telstra recently announced they had successfully demonstrated 400 gigabit per second (Gbps) speeds over 61.5 GHz spectrum on Telstra’s transmission network in Melbourne. This demonstrates the highest spectral efficiency per fibre pair ever achieved in a live environment and enables up to 30.4 terabit per second (Tbps) bandwidth on Telstra’s transmission network in Melbourne. This demonstration achieves world’s highest transmission capacity over a single fiber pair. Previously, the highest capacity on record was 25.6 Tbps. And it also achieved 24 Tpbs transmission capacity over a single fiber pair using C+L dual-band technology on PLCN subsea cable network.

Telstra announced on Jan. 22nd at the PTC conference in Hawaii that it had entered into agreements to invest in two new international subsea cable systems, Hong Kong Americas (HKA) and Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), both to deliver straight connection between Hong Kong and Los Angeles of the United States. The HKA cable is expected to be completed in 2020 and PLCN in 2019.

Cross River Fiber, a New Jersey-based, boutique network infrastructure and telecommunications solutions provider, announces the completion of its fiber network to the NJFX Tier 3 colocation campus in Wall Township, NJ. The highly-anticipated fiber route provides both enterprises, as well as the international community, with a robust interconnection option between the NJFX campus and key financial exchanges and carrier hotels in NY and NJ.