Submarine Roundup: Southern Cross, Telebras, SAex, CAT

A quick survey of some of this weeks updates in the submarine cable sector:

Southern Cross made a big bandwidth sale down under. Australian alternative provider iiNet has signed an IRU agreement taking its current 20Gbps up to 200Gbps, although not all at once of course. The first additional 20Gbps will be added next month.

Brazil’s state-owned Telebras is apparently still building the relationships needed for its proposed US/Forteleza cable system. We first heard about this back in March, but according to Telegeography they’re still putting together the consortium. The cable is expected to cost $900M, with the first network segments available in 2014.  I still think this somehow gets combined with other efforts.

South Atlantic Express has (unsurprisingly) had difficulty finding the funding it needs to build that giant South-Africa-Brazil cable they have been planning. What used to be a 2013 launch has been pushed back to Q4 of 2014 at least, according to reports. 12.8Tbps between Africa and South America still seems like a heck of a lot, Olympics and World Cup or not.

And Thailand’s state-owned CAT will be putting more money into the Asia Pacific Gateway project. They’ll be taking up the slack as TOT pulls out in a bit of Thai rearrangement. This is the same cable that we recently heard Facebook is investing in.

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Categories: Undersea cables