According to Huawei Marine, the second stage of upgrade on the WACS (West African Cable System) submarine cable system (WACS Upgrade II) was completed in Feb., 2019. The WACS Upgrade II realized 32*100G wavelengths configured on the longest optically amplified single fiber span stretching 11500km from South Africa to Portugal.

Paratus Africa has announced that it has activated additional capacity between West Africa Undersea Cable System (WACS) and Lusaka, Zambia. This follows the recent Paratus Trans Kalahari Fibre project that was built between the WACS landing station in Swakopmund, Namibia and the Zambian Sesheke border.

NEW YORK, March 11, 2019 – DE-CIX, the world’s leading Internet Exchange (IX) operator with the fastest-growing IX in the New York metro area, and Seaborn Networks (“Seaborn”), a leading developer-owner-operator of subsea fiber optic cable systems, today announce that Seaborn has established an interconnection to DE-CIX New York enabling turn-key direct access from Seabras-1.  Seabras-1, built, owned and operated by Seaborn, is a fully operational 6-fiber pair, 72Tbps submarine cable system between Brazil and the U.S offering the lowest latency path between São Paulo and the NY metro area.

Following the landing at Deep Water Bay in Hong Kong in March 2018, PLCN landed at Dockweiler Beach in Los Angeles in November 2018. With tremendous efforts from professional teams of PLDC and the PLCN parties, PLCN has achieved one and another milestone. Being the first cable connecting Hong Kong and US directly, the first C+L bands technology enabled submarine cable system in the world and the largest capacity submarine cable across the Pacific Ocean, PLCN is coming in-service in 2019.

In December last year I published an article on submarine cable landscape set to unfold in India in 2019-21. An afterthought stayed on thereafter - why is growth of new submarine cables abysmally slow in India, despite skyrocketing growth in data consumption. The answer may not be straightforward, given the number of intertwined variables involved. One key reason is, submarine cables and their landing in the last 15 years have been under monopolistic control of telco carriers, whose dominance manifested primarily as duopoly of the two leading providers and that possibly throttled the growth of submarine cables.

According to Equinix, Google has selected Equinix LA4 as its Los Angeles cable landing station (CLS) for the Curie subsea cable system. The Curie subsea cable system will land directly at the Equinix LA4 International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center located in El Segundo, Calif. The Curie cable is expected to be ready for service in 2019.

According to Telstra news, the Indigo consortium comprising AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra announced on January 25, 2019 a significant milestone in the implementation of the INDIGO cable system with the completion, on schedule, of the final splicing of both the INDIGO West cable and Indigo Central cable. The Indigo consortium has began the commissioning of the Indigo submarine cable system.

According to Bloomberg news, BT has botained two nationalwide domestic telecom licenses in China and become the first non-Chinese telecom company to receive nationwide licenses in China. The news has been confirmed by BT, Chinese media and government authorities.

Colt Technology Services announced on Thursday the expansion of its portfolio in Asia, with the launch of Colt Private Wave in Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Colt Private Wave is explicitly designed for businesses that require private optical solutions to ensure high security, high performance and resilient connectivity. It is designed to meet the most demanding customer needs, supporting multiple optical services or service types up to 100Gbps.

Windstream Wholesale announced recently that it is collaborating with Telxius to connect its core network to MAREA and BRUSA cable systems at the Virginia Beach Cable Landing Station. The Windstream-Telxius collaboration will provide Windstream Wholesale customers with unprecedented high-speed network connections into Europe, South America, the Caribbean and multiple points nationally across the U.S., and enhances connectivity options to Telxius' MAREA and BRUSA cable systems.

Teraco Data Environments announced on Thursday that Berkshire Partners LLC has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in the company. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and the customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2019. The Permira funds, an existing shareholder, will remain a significant investor. According to Bloomsberg, Berkshire Partners becomes the biggest shareholder in Teraco Data Environments. Teraco is the leading provider of carrier neutral colocation datacentres in Africa, hosting NAPAfrica and connecting with various subsea cables.

According to Bloomberg news, BT has botained two nationalwide domestic telecom licenses in China and become the first non-Chinese telecom company to receive nationwide licenses in China. The news has been confirmed by BT, Chinese media and government authorities.

According to Telxius, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has signed an IRU agreement with Telxius for the use of a fibre pair on MAREA cable system partially owned by Telxius. MAREA provides high capacity, low latency, route diversity. MAREA is the first open subsea cable system in the world, connecting Virginia Beach, USA, and Sopelana, Spain, with a system design capacity of 200Tbps, being the the highest capacity submarine cable in the world.

Submarine cables form the backbone of the Internet and there are over 300 subsea cables today that interconnect continents and countries. In recent years, as cloud and content providers attempt to reach more users and provide reliable and bandwidth intensive services, submarine infrastructure has exploded. The number of new submarine cables is set to grow by 50 percent in 2019 versus 2018 (source: TeleGeography’s submarine cable map).

EllaLink Ireland Ltd (EllaLink) announced on Tuesday that Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) have started construction of the EllaLink Submarine Cable System. The BELLA (Building the Europe Link to Latin America) Consortium, the major financer of EllaLink, announced on the same day that EllaLink and Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) have finalised agreements for the construction of the EllaLink submarine fibre optic cable system. EllaLink is scheduled for operation in 2020.

According to Infinera, Infinera announced the completion of a major upgrade to Australia-Japan Cable’s (AJC) submarine cable system connecting Australia, Guam and Japan. AJC tripled lit capacity on its 12,700-kilometer subsea cable system by upgrading their Infinera DTN-X network with Infinera’s fourth generation optical engine – ICE4 (Infinite Capacity Engine).