ANTONY SAVVAS SUBSEA CABLES
GOING FORWARD Gulf Bridge International (GBI) operates terrestrial and subsea cables. “We are at a point now where demand for data is outstripping the capacity of our subsea cable network, especially around regions undergoing remarkable digital transformations,” says Brendan Press, chief commercial officer at GBI. “Increasing demand for capacity, both current and future levels, requires fibre cables that can support this demand and which won’t need regularly updating to keep pace.” Take the Gulf region for instance, says Press, we are seeing investment from the likes of Microsoft and Google into Qatar’s digital economy, for example, from the rollout of their cloud services. This is in line with new Gulf government initiatives that place digital growth high on their agendas. “They are actively collaborating with global businesses to support the desired quality and bandwidth of their digital services. It’s clear that there is a huge potential in rapidly growing markets, which is therefore placing greater pressure on the cable networks supporting these economies,” Press says. He calls for the industry to “future- proof” the networks available. Cable providers in recent years have increasingly introduced expansions to their network offerings, as these new economies look to exchange with global markets. However, says Press, greater collaboration across the industry has also “become key” to addressing market challenges, by adding diversification along routes. This means that customers have the option of two connectivity pathways, alleviating existing pressures along oversaturated routes. “This form of investment is also beneficial for the wider industry by offering redundant routes, meaning that in the event of an outage, there is a guarantee of service continuity.” While the subsea optical networking industry enjoys the growth being seen across it, it must also do its best to avoid the pitfalls.
Lavallée told us, “There are huge levels of growth across a number of global markets when looking at the demand for subsea fibre cables. But the highest-capacity route is still the transatlantic route, based on historical, political, and economic reasons. “Africa is also experiencing a massive increase in investments for new subsea cables that will encircle the continent and connect over 1.5 billion Africans to the rest of the world.” But subsea cables have become a political football in some quarters too, with the US administration becoming suspicious about the involvement of Chinese companies in the build-out of new cables. And no doubt Russia will also be coming under focus as well, as most subsea infrastructure is shared. “Current US policy is not to allow data services to terminate in the US if these services have transited China,” says Bennett. “Several submarine cables have been re-routed during their planning phase as a result.” One of the consequences is that certain Asia- Pacific nations are now trying to attract cloud hyperscalers to locate their data centres in their countries, to streamline the permitting of new submarine cables to deliver the required capacity. Bennett added, “It’s true that the same thing will probably happen following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but Russia is less strategic in terms of submarine cable routes than China, as most of Russia’s international capacity passes over terrestrial cables.” Howard Kidorf, managing partner at Pioneer Consulting, says, “Africa is a challenging location to run telecom networks, however, Google, Meta, and a host of other companies have invested in new cables on the eastern, western, and northern sides of the continent.” Kidorf says the trans-Pacific market is also “strong”, as companies have adjusted to the “architectural changes” brought about by the tension between China and the US. “This has manifested itself by the elimination of new cables directly connecting these countries, as well as the interest of cable owners in avoiding the South China Sea.”
pair in order to increase the possible number of fibre pairs per cable. Ciena ‘s Senior Director of Submarine Network Solutions Brian Lavallée told Optical Connections, “The very latest in coherent optics, coupled with new subsea wet plant and optical amplifiers installed on the seabed, have allowed the subsea networking industry to maintain pace with 40% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) bandwidth growth, while simultaneously reducing power and space requirements by a further 50%, which is great for the environment.” “Submarine cables are designed to have an engineering life of 25 years,” says Infinera’s Bennett. “Once they are deployed, the only thing you can upgrade to increase capacity is the transponder technology at the ends of the cable.” Jonathan Homa, senior director for solutions marketing at Ribbon Commmunications, says, “New transmission technology based on next-generation 5nm DSPs delivers maximum spectral capacity at the lowest cost for submarine fibre optic transmission, using two powerful programmable capabilities.” These are, he says, continuous baud rate in increments of one Gbaud up to an industry fastest of 140Gbaud; and continuous modulation from two to six bits per symbol, in increments of 0.1 bits. “By combining these fine controls, this new transmission technology can shape the optical signal right to the edge of the theoretical Shannon Limit, considering different spectral loss profiles along the fibre.” The overall result is fewer wavelengths, each handling more capacity and propagating further, making submarine fibre optics more effective and more economical. New subsea cables usually use 16 pairs of fibres, but a new cable that NTT is building between the US and Japan, for instance, employs 20 fibre pairs to reach 350Tbps.
LOCATION As for where the subsea activity is,
Jimmy Yu Vice President, Dell’Oro Group
Geoff Bennett Director Of Solutions Technology, Infinera
Takahiro Sumimoto Senior Vice President Marine Cable Division, NTT
Jonathan Homa Senior Director, Solutions
Howard Kidorf Managing Partner, Pioneer Consulting
Brendan Press Chief Commercial Officer, GBI.
Marketing, Ribbon Commmunications
www.opticalconnectionsnews.com
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ISSUE 34 | Q3 2023
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