Seaborn Brings MicroSoft Aboard, Boosts Proposed US-Brazil Capacity

Seaborn Networks took another big step toward making its US-Brazil submarine cable system plans into reality by bringing on a big name as a foundational customer. None other than Microsoft has entered into an agreement for network capacity on Seabras-1.

Like Google and Facebook, the rise of the cloud has prompted Microsoft to take a new look at the world of network infrastructure.  If they’re looking for big capacity to South America, they’re surely also sniffing around the North Atlantic and the Pacific.

With Microsoft on board, Seaborn is also planning to expand its initial plans by adding some 50% to the originally planned theoretical bandwidth. The system will now be designed for six fiber pairs and 60Tbps of total capacity, which is a heck of a big pipe even given the rapid growth in demand between the two continents.

When it goes live in 2016, Seabras-1 will hook up Sao Paolo with New York City, with a branch off to Fortaleza of course.  After modifying initial plans to start from Miami (which is what I have in the pic to the left), they’ll shifted to a direct route to the Mid-Atlantic and plan to bring the latency between NYC and Sao Paolo down to something like 104ms.

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Categories: Undersea cables