Microsoft Participates in Cable Games for Seabras-1

According to Seaborn Networks, Microsoft has been on board as the foundational customer for Seabras-1 and fully participates in the Seabras-1 cable system. In the meanwhile, Seaborn Networks announced to increase the capacity of the Seabras-1 by 50%. Seaborn Networks achieved a big step toward bringing up the US-Brazil submarine cable connecting New York and São Paulo.

The Seabras-1 cable system is scheduled to be ready for service in 2016. Though it seems the Seabras-1 won’t catch the cable schedule for Rio 2016 Olympic Games, it will shorten the latency between New York and São Paulo down to 104ms, with a branch off to Fortaleza.

"We are excited to work with Seaborn to expand our 'mobile first, cloud first' experience in Brazil," said Vijay Gill, General Manager of Global Networking Services, Microsoft. "Seaborn and Microsoft share a common desire to deploy secure infrastructure and to further accelerate the availability of cloud technologies in Brazil and throughout Latin America. This investment highlights Microsoft's commitment to enhancing our cloud infrastructure for the benefit of our customers in this region.

With the participation of Microsoft, Seaborn Networks announced to revise the network design of the Seabras-1 cable system, being a 6-fiber pair system with a maximum upgradeable capacity of 60Tbps, increasing the system capacity by 50%.

Following Google’s investment in Unity, SJC and FASTER, and Facebook’s investment in APG, Microsoft is now entering into the submarine cable games and build their own global network infrastructure. According to industry information, it is said Microsoft also intends to participate in another submarine cable consortium for a new trans-pacific submarine cable.