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.

According to telecompaper, Telebras will no longer participate in the EllaLink submarine cable project linking Brazil and Europe for lack of resources, Telebras said in a statement to the Brazilian stock market regulator. In the end of 2018, Telebras exited as a shareholder of EllaLink by swapping its equity interest into irrevocable rights of use (IRU) under a share swap agreement. And now, Telebras is expecting to terminate its contractual rights in the EllaLink cable system. The withdrawal of Telebras won't have significant impact on the EllaLink project.

The owners of the Seabras-1 cable conneting New York and São Paulo, Seabras 1 Bermuda Ltd (“Seabras Bermuda”) and Seabras 1 USA LLC (“Seabras US” and, together with Seabras Bermuda, the “Companies”), filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (the “Filings”) in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on December 22, 2019, saying that an underwhelming number of customer contracts rendered it unable to make payments on its $150 million in secured debt obligations. Seaborn Networks, the operator of the Seabras-1 cable system, is not part of the Filings and will continue to be the operator of the Seabras-1 cable system throughout the Filings process.

NTT Ltd announced on December 13, 2019 that it will commence the construction of the MIST submarine cable system, a 12 fiber-pair and 240Tbps large-capacity submarine cable conneting Singapore, Myanmar and India (Mumbai and Chennai). Orient Link Pte. Ltd. (Orient Link), a strategic joint venture of NTT, JICT and WEN Capital, will undertake the construction of MIST cable system. The cost of the MIST cable system is approximately USD400million. NTT aims to link its large-scale data centers in Singapore, Myanmar and India with the MIST cable system.

The Coral Sea Cable System (CS²) connects both Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Solomon Islands to the major East Coast Internet Hub at Sydney, Australia. The Coral Sea Cable System (CS²) consists of 4 fibre pairs, with 2 fibre pairs from Sydney to Port Moresby and Honiara, respective capital cities of PNG and the Solomon Islands, yielding up to 20Tbps to each of the South Pacific countries. 

Africa may be a growing hub of digital innovation, particularly noticeable in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi and Lagos – with companies in these metropolitan areas taking advantage of high-speed fibre connections to embrace the cloud and develop new business models and processes.  These leading-edge companies are connecting with their peers more-and-more at a regional and global level.

Vocus has celebrated the successful completion of the Coral Sea Cable System for the Australian Government. After final testing, the 4,700 km Coral Sea Cable connecting Sydney, Honiara and Port Moresby, and the 730 km Solomon Islands Domestic Network, were accepted by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, a month earlier than planned.