SEACOM

SEACOM:

• Investors: Herakles (backed by Blackstone); Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (founded by Prince Karim Aga Khan IV of Pakistan) through IPS; Venfin (led by South African Johann Rupert); Convergence Partners (led by former South African DoC DG Andile Ngcaba); Shanduka (led by South African Cyril Ramaphosa); Neotel (has pledged ZAR 20 million for cable station)
• CAPEX/Cost : approx. USD 650 mn
• RFS : June 2009
• Financing arranged by Nedbank and Investec
• Suppliers/Contractors : Tyco
• Length 15,000 km
• Links Southern and East Africa, Europe and South Asia
• Capacity : 2 FP, 1.28 Tbps design
  

Main One

MAIN One is a private cable system currently under construction; owned by Main Street Technologies: "led by Ms. Funke Opeke, who worked as an executive at Verizon, as the chief technology officer at MTN, and as chief operating officer of Nitel from late-2006 to early-2007".

EASSy

East African Submarine cable System (EASSy) was proposed by a consortium of regional (east African) operators.

TEAMS

TEAMS (The East African Marine System) is a point-to-point system connecting Mombasa, Kenya and Fujairah, UAE. It was initially proposed by Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) in 2006.

• Supply contract awarded to ASN in October, 2007
• CAPEX : USD 82 mn
• Revised ownership, as of 2008: Gov’t. of Kenya (20%); UAE incumbent Etisalat (15%); Earmark for “Private Telecommunications Operators” (65%) -- Interested: Safaricom, UUNet, Access Kenya, Jamii Telecom
• Investors assuming 5% equity would pay USD 214/Mb/mo. for wet plant between Mombasa and Fujairah
  
• Onward connectivity from Fujairah to Europe or USA would be USD 55k to USD 100k per STM-1 per year, according to Kenyan gov’t
• RFS : ??
• Capacity : ??

Credits: M Ruddy/Terabit

Intra-Asia Cables

Some times ago, I'd tried to find out more about Pacnet's EAC-C2C cables. It was not easy since both EAC and C2C are mature systems that operated since more than 6 years ago and that the ownership was changed several times. I found an interresting talk given by Yves Poppe at APAN meeting oneday in 2006: i.e. he addressed 3 "east Asian telecommunication aortas" :

• EAC (East Asia Crossing) : design capacity --> 2.56 Tbps; RFS Jan 2001
• APCN-2 (Asia Pacific Cable Network - 2): design capacity --> 2.56 Tbps; RFS Dec 2001
• C2C (City to City): design capacity --> 7.68 Tbps; RFS Dec 2001
  

i2i (Cable Network)

i2i stands for India to International. It is the first private cable to directly link India and Singapore. i2i was planned as a cable network spanning 10,800 km which would approximately be cost USD 650 mn. Phase 1 of i2i cable development covered a linear link between Chennai - Tuas and a terrestrial link between Chennai and Mumbai. What about Phase 2 or beyond ? This should include a submarine cable link between Mumbai and Singapore. Does anybody know?

Tata Indicom Cable (TIC)

TIC belongs to the first cable systems which are fully owned and operated from the beginning (not acquired) by VSNL/Tata. TIC is also known as TIISCS (Tata Indicom India-Singapore Cable System). Several facts:

Trans-Pacific Express (2)

The first phase of TPE (Trans Pacific Express) cable is just ready for service!

Some updates (see the other older post) :

• "Originally announced as a 5.12 terabit system in December 2006, the cable system has increased in capacity, and when fully deployed when phase two is completed, TPE will be a 6 terabit submarine cable system" (Submarine Cable News); 6.4 Tbps I guess
• Suppliers: Tyco (prime); ASN; NEC
• "With the addition of NTT Communications, the TPE cable system will add a submarine cable link to Japan giving the TPE cable system six landing sites"
• "The operating capacity of the system is 3.2 Tbps, an increase of 25 percent over the original system design. With a minimum 80 wavelengths per fiber, TPE has the highest wave-density of any submarine cable in the world at this length."
  

SJC Plan

Southeast-asia Japan Cable (SJC) is currently in the planning stage. This second Google-led cable initiative will extend Unity cable to Southeast Asia.

• RFS: earliest 2011 (Alan Mauldin's estimate)
• Corsortium members: Google, Bharti, SingTel, KDDI, Global Transit (all these companies are also member of Unity Japan-US)
• Consortium members (SJC only): Globe Telecom Philippines, TOT Thailand
• Contractors/suppliers: ??? the same as Unity ???
• Current status: planning stage; preparation of supply contract
• CAPEX ???
  

Southeast-asia Japan Cable (SJC) Plan (Source/Courtesy Telegeography)

PPC-1 (Pipe Pacific Cable-1)

PPC-1 is owned (via its subsidiaries) by PIPE Networks, which is claimed itself as "Australia's largest peering provider and operates 16 IX points in 6 cities with over 130 active connections". PIPE has a close partnership with VSNL(Tata), in particular as the company intends to expand its business to the international wholesale market.

Intra-Asia & Transpacific Cables

According to Byron Clatterbuck (Tata), current supply for transpacific connection is as follows:

TGN-Pacific

• Capacity: 8 FP; 96 channels at 10 Gbps each; 1.4 Tbps lit; 7.8 Tbps design
• Owner: Tata/TGN

JUSCN

• Capacity: 4 FP; 1.28 Tbps lit & design (full occupied) ??
• Owner: Consortium

PC-1

• Capacity: 4 FP; 320 Gbps lit; 1.28 Tbps design
• Owner: (same owner as Southern Cross??)

How about intra-Asia segments? There are also many alternatives. This includes EAC-C2C (Pacnet), IAC, TIC, Flag (FNAL). There might be also several other systems.

A (Possibly) New Competitor for Matrix and Jakabare

A competitor or a friend ? :-) It could actually be a potential partner if you want to connect to Western Australia!

I don't remember precisely how, but yesterday my Firefox browser took me to Ochre's website. Honestly, I've never heard Ochre before, so I was a bit surprised; similar to the moment where I read about the MCS project for the first time.

Bandwidth "Under Water"

As Asia NetCom (currently PACNET) introduced its idea for EAC Pacific one or two years ago, they underlined the fact that due to underserved routes from South and South-East Asia, Japan-US connections have become a bottleneck. They have shown a picture similar to one below. It has attracted my attention since it split Asia into three regions together with their connectivity parameters. At least, it was something different than we might see in the free version of TeleGeography's reports/databases :-D CMIIW!

After a closer look at the given bandwidth figures and comparing with other publications (TeleGeography etc.), I have to conclude that it isn't real i.e. ANC possibly gave the capacity based on design numbers (fully equiped system). Right ?? Wrong ??

Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) Cable System

TPE (Trans-Pacific Express) is claimed to be "the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the US and China" and "the first major undersea system to land on the US West Coast in more than seven years". TPE will have a more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing cable directly linking the US and China, and thus it will be a major enhancement to the current cable systems between these nations.

TPE links China (Chongming and Qingdao), South Korea, Taiwan, and USA (Nedonna Beach). TPE is owned by a joint venture (ownership is evently split) between 6 telcos: China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Korea Telecom, Verizon Communications, AT&T and NTT (the two latest joined in 03/2008).

Unity Cable System

Unity is a new multi-terabit transpacific cable system with Google's taste :-D As you can see at this post, I've misunderstood that EAC Pacific would completely be a new transpac cable. It shall actually be a part of the Unity cable. To my knowledge, there are currently three competing parties offering new Asia-US connections:

• Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) : Verizon's Taste :-)
• Asia America Gateway (AAG)
• Unity : PACNET, Google etc.

Any other planned cables ?

New Asian/Transpacific Submarine Cables

In addition to AAG, several new cable systems in/via Asia are developed (just commissioned or currently under construction). This includes :

• Trans-Pacific Express (US-China)
• FLAG NGN (Intra-Asia, Intra-Africa, Mediterranean, Trans-Pacific)
• IMEWE/TIC (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Europe)
• East Asia Crossing (EAC) Extension
  

National and Regional RENs

Actually since a long time ago I want to write threads about RENs (Research and Education Networks). Why? Simply because they were the origin of the current Internet and they still have a major role in creating advances in networking technologies. This time I would not start with an indonesian case (if INHERENT or Jardiknas can be categorized as a National REN/NREN), but with european cases.

Asia America Gateway AAG (2)

One day in 2007 George McLaughlin has mentioned AAG as a possible infrastructure for supporting future Asian networks (APAN - in the context of RENs). It shall at the begin this year a decision whether or not APAN acquires a stake in the consortium. Since the Hengchun's earthquake many people see AAG as a potential infrastructure for increasing network reliability between (South/South-East) Asia and the USA, since it uses different routes than the usual Asia-US submarine cables. AAG also plays an important and strategic role that it can be extended to other countries/continents, thus increasing network reliability at a global scale (see the pic below).

TIS Cable

TIS stands for Thailand Indonesia Singapore. As indicated by the name, it is an optical submarine cable spanning from Songkhla (Thailand) to Batam (Indonesia) via Changi (Singapore). TIS cable was the first submarine cable project of PT. Telkom.

DMCS

Dumai Melaka Cable System (DMCS) is owned jointly by PT. Telkom and Telekom Malaysia. This was the second submarine cable project of PT. Telkom after the TIS (Thailand Indonesia Singapore) cable.