Telxius has announced to join force with Orange on Dunant cable system, to provide each other with terrestrial backhaul extensions in France and in the US. Orange also announced to collaborate with Telxius to offer co-location services for Google’s trans-Atlantic Dunant cable project, to provide and operate mutual terrestrial backhaul extensions at their respective Cable Landing Stations in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, France, and Virginia Beach in the US.

According to Ciena, the Europe India Gateway (EIG) submarine cable system has been upgraded with additional 24.3Tbps capacity, deploying with  Ciena’s  GeoMesh solution, powered by WaveLogic Ai coherent optics. The upgrade allows EIG to utilize flexible, express wavelengths, also known as optical bypass, to reduce operational costs as well as space and power requirements while improving reliability. 

Huawei Marine Networks (HMN) announced the contract to construct a new submarine cable project, the Maldives Sri Lanka Cable system (MSC). The MCS cable system will facilitate a direct connection between the Maldives and Sri Lanka increasing regional capacity and network diversity.

According to The Seattle Times, local residents in an Oregon coastal town Tierra del Mar are trying to stop Facebook from using property in their quiet community to build a landing site for the Jupiter undersea cable connecting the United States, Japan and the Philippine.

As of December 2019, there are 74 FCC licensed submarine cable systems in the US, and 12 pending new submarine cable landing license or renewal applications. The FCC needs to coordinate with other Executive Branch agencies (such as Team Telecom) applications where a foreign citizen or foreign-organized entity, including foreign government, would hold a 10 percent or greater direct or indirect equity or voting interest in the licensee.

Huawei Marine Networks announces that the number of their contracts into force accumulatively reaches over 100, including new build and upgrade projects. In 2019, it has gained 12 contracts, and its annual performance shows a noticeable growth in the recent years. Meanwhile, HMN has applied qualified 16 fiber-pair SDM repeaters as a pioneer and utilized WSS ROADM Branch Unit and Open Cable system in commercial cases.

Infrastructure and institutional investors are increasingly turning their attention to digital infrastructure assets and the global rollout of fibre broadband. Fibre-to-the-home in particular is seen as an essential component of digital transformation and as providing a large pool of investment opportunities.

Though the sector has traditionally been dominated by telecoms players, recent years have seen more interest and deal activity from infrastructure investors and their lenders.

Nokia and Angola Cables announced the successful trial of optical wavelengths at 300 Gbps between Miami and Luanda, over the subsea cable route combining SACS and MONET subsea systems. The trial achieved for the first direct optical connection between Africa and the US, deploying with Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine 3 (PSE-3) chipset on SACS and MONET subsea systems. The route provides direct, low-latency trans-Atlantic routing and greatly simplifies the turn-up of services to better serve rapidly growing data consumption markets in Africa.

PCCW Global and PEACE Cable International Network Co., Limited has announced the cooperate on the PEACE South extension of the Pakistan East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) submarine cable system. This cooperation positions PEACE as a major cable system to head south from the crucial high-speed Europe-Asia route, in a move that will deliver far-reaching connectivity benefits to the entire southern African region.

According to NJFX, the only Cable Landing Station (CLS) colocation campus in the U.S offering Tier 3, carrier-neutral data center capabilities, Telenor Maritime has expanded its U.S presence at the NJFX CLS campus. Telenor Maritime is establishing a direct connection to Norway via the Havfrue/AEC-2 subsea cable system, which traverses the North Atlantic and connects the U.S. at NJFX to mainland Northern Europe. 

HC2 Holdings, Inc. (HC2) announced on Thursday to sell 100% of its subsidiary Global Marine Group (GMG) to an investment affiliate of J.F. Lehman & Company, LLC (JFLCO). The sale includes GMG’s operating subsidiary Global Marine Systems Limited (GMSL), along with several joint ventures, and excludes the previously sale of GMG’s 49% joint venture Huawei Marine Networks Co., Limited (HMN). The total base consideration for 100% of GMG (excluding HMN) is approximately $250 million, and the total valuation of GMG is approximately $390 million.

NEC Corporation and its subsidiary OCC Corporation announced today that they have completed full qualification of subsea repeaters and optical cable containing up to 20 fiber pairs (40 fibers). This is a 25% improvement in fiber count over 16 fiber pair systems previously built by NEC. This development allows cable owners worldwide to construct subsea telecom cables capable of the highest traffic capacity, while optimizing the cost per bit of the wet plant.

This article is part-two of the previous article – Mumbai-Chennai-Singapore, the Superhot Submarine Superhighway. It completes the narrative on new submarine cables to be unveiled in the course of 2020 that are set to land in India. Designating it part-two made sense as Mumbai-Chennai-Singapore initiatives is few steps ahead of Mumbai-Marseilles with respect to new submarine cables.

According to Inidan news, Reliance Jio Infocomm will build two new submarine cable systems connecting Singapore and Europe, the India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) connecting Mumbai and Chennai, and the India-Europe-Xpress (IEX) connecting Mumbai to Europe. The IAX and IEX cables will provide direct connectivity to the top content hubs worldwide, and the deployment is set to boost India’s data availability.

According to the French National Research Institue (IRD), scientists have for the first time shown that it is possible to detect the propagation of seismic waves on the seafloor using submarine telecommunications optical fiber cables. According to their research, this existing infrastructure could be used to detect earthquakes, as well as swell and underwater noise. The existing submarine cables will offer potential as billions of seismic sensors.

Does it look impudent marketing to designate the 5500 kms Mumbai-Chennai-Singapore subsea route as superhot submarine superhighway! Its relevance as standalone subsea route from the international gateways of global connectivity in north-west and south-east coast of India to APAC business hub of Singapore is as important as segment of the larger SEA-ME-WE Eurasian subsea corridor.