SUBMARINE TELECOMS

FORUMISSUE 100 | MAY 2018

THE 100TH ISSUE GLOBAL CAPACITY SUBMARINE TELECOMS

FORUMISSUE 100 | MAY 2018 CONTENTS features 10 14 MUSINGS ON GLOBAL CAPACITY: ISSUE 100 Is the edge By Stephen Nielsen moving again? By Joel Ogren 18 22 SAMOAN 5 QUESTIONS CELEBRATIONS: WITH ALI AMIRI: Tui-Samoa Cable Talking Industry Making Waves Trends with Etisalat’s in the Submarine Group Chief Carrier Cable Arena & Wholesale Officer By Emmanuel Delanoue and Molilaauifogaa Seanoa – Laumua 26 32 VIRGINIA: THE DATA ENTRÉE INTO CENTER CAPITAL OF WEST AFRICA THE WORLD MainOne Invests in Now At The Confluence Cote D’Ivoire Landing Of Five Continents By Funke Opeke By Vinay Nagpal CONTENTS 34 36 NEXT STEPS NORDIC UPDATE IN THE PACIFIC: The England Cable A Subsea Cable Linking Stavanger and Changing and Newcastle Will Provide Cloud Infrastructure the Nordics With a New Across the Pacific Gateway to Global Capacity By Winston Qiu By Dag Aanensen 40 44 VIRGINIA BEACH THE FIRST GLOBAL Poised to be the host NETWORKBY ST of Large-Scale Subsea Activity By Stewart Ash ewart As By Greg Twitt departments EXORDIUM ...... 2 FROM THE CONFERENCE DIRECTOR ...... 58 ANALYTICS ...... 6 SUBMARINE CABLE NEWS NOW ...... 62 BACK REFLECTION ...... 48 ADVERTISER CORNER ...... 64 FROM THE PROGRAMME COMMITTEE ...... 54 FEATURE

VIRGINIA THE DATA CENTER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, IS NOW AT THE CONFLUENCE OF FIVE CONTINENTS

Insights from the NVTC Data Center & Cloud Infrastructure Committee BY VINAY NAGPAL

orthern Virginia is currently the leading data center equipment. For those of you not familiar with Loudoun market in the world, and the data center development County’s location, it is located about 25 miles (40 kms) N in the region is showing no signs of slowing down. from nation’s capital, and about 25 minutes from the scenic Loudoun County in particular clearly takes the lead in farmland in Virginia. Loudoun County is #1 in median all data center markets globally; however, Prince William household income in the US, and #1 in business growth County, Henrico County in Virginia (according to and Hampton Roads—are SmartAsset, 2017). regions coming up as well Over the last two decades in the commonwealth of of so, Ashburn has clearly Virginia. Data Centers made its mark on the Inter- contribute over $180M net Infrastructure industry. annually in revenue to the It is indeed the leading data Loudoun County every center market in the world year. Tere are over 3,000 – if you go by numbers, with technology companies over 75 data centers, 10M housed in the Loudoun sq. ft. of operating data County data centers. Te center capacity, over 1 GW tax incentives in the county (1000 MW) with another include sales and use tax 4.5M sq. ft. under devel- exemptions on servers, gen- opment. Just to put things erators, chillers and server in perspective, 1 MW can

26 SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE “GOT DATA? LOUDOUN COUNTY DOES. LOTS OF IT. WITH ITS EXPANSIVE FIBER NETWORKS AND A SWARM OF TECH WORKERS, IT’S A MAJOR TRAFFIC HUB ON THE EAST COAST.” —CNN MONEY power one single-family home, so that is enough to pow- to get to its fnal destination in the most optimum path. er 1000 single family homes. Dominion Energy has done Loudoun County boasts the most interconnected loca- a phenomenal job of being a fantastic partner of the data tion in the north east, and is also home to several Internet center community. In addition to constantly adding capacity, Exchanges, that enable multiple parties to connect with they have various renewable energy programs in place as each other and exchange trafc. is where well for the data center community to take advantage of. the frst commercial exchange was born called MAE-East Northern Virginia boasts a technically skilled workforce. (Metropolitan Area Exchange) by Metropolitan Fiber Sys- Huge presence of government technology contracting com- tems (MFS) in Tysons Corner in 1992. Since then several panies has also contributed to this pool of talented workers. connectivity-centric companies have made a mark in the Data Center operators are continuing their buildouts at a Northern Virginia landscape including UUNET, PSINet, rapid pace. Increasing investments in building new and up- AOL, Equinix, to name a few. grading existing data centers that support the provision of Terrestrial fber construction has continued perpetually Cloud services is among the main drivers of growth. Other over the last two decades or so; you constantly see fber drivers of the data center forecast include growing use of splice trucks, and road being dug up wherein new conduit Big Data analytics, Internet of Tings (IoT) technology systems and terrestrial fber optic cables are being installed and a growing need for data center colocation and managed underneath and beside the public roads. Recently we have services. Embracing of technologies like Virtual Reality, seen the installation of 3,456 strand fber cable systems video, social media, banking is also leading to more data installed in the Northern Virginia region. Te region boasts generation and data consumption. some of the country’s most fber dense roads and several of Connectivity is an extremely vital component of the data nation’s carriers are in this region as depicted in this image center business model. It is pretty simple – whatever data (courtesy of NEFiber). comes in to the data center, must go out. Te data may be brought in on 18-wheelers trucks with cabinets full of servers, with servers full of data, but it must go out over fber optic cables, that comprises of thin strands of fber glass. Each of these strands of fber glass is thinner than human hair but have immense capacity to carry data. With the latest DWDM technology, each fber pair can support up to 200 channels with each channel capable of carrying up to 100 Gbps trafc. So efectively you can send up to 20,000 Gbps or 20 Tbps of data over one fber pair. It is believed that over 70% of the world’s Internet trafc passes through Loudoun County. Tere are several hun- dred networks present in this region on which trafc is changing hands, in order

MAY 2018 | ISSUE 100 27 FEATURE

ACCORDING TO CISCO’S VISUAL NETWORK INDEX, THE LEVEL OF GLOBAL DATA TRAFFIC IS EXPECTED TO REACH 3.3 ZETTABYTES BY 2021 AND ALMOST EVERY BYTE TOUCHES A SUBSEA CABLE AS CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDERS, NETWORK SERVICE PROVIDERS, CONTENT PROVIDERS AND ENTERPRISES PUSH TO MOVE DATA GLOBALLY IN REAL TIME.

According to Cisco’s Visual Network Index, the level Te state of Virginia has recently received it’s share of of global data trafc is expected to reach 3.3 zettabytes by new subsea cables. Until recently, in order for the inter- 2021 and almost every byte touches a subsea cable as cloud national Internet trafc to leave the state of Virginia and service providers, network service providers, content provid- reach its destination in other parts of the world had to be ers and enterprises push to move data globally in real time. frst sent to the state of New York, New Jersey or Florida. Subsea cables are responsible for $10 Trillion in transactions Tis is because the “landing stations” where the subsea every day. Te rapid growth of data, from the very basic web fber systems terminate existing only in these three states browsing and e-commerce to streaming of video and Artif- in the eastern seaboard of United States. Tis changed in cial Intelligence, is helping drive a global resurgence in new 2017 – with the state of Virginia getting its frst sub- subsea cable systems. Twenty new subsea cables will launch sea cable MAREA connecting Bilbao Spain to Virginia in 2018 alone, with Beach. Tis system capacity of ~700 TB is jointly owned by (vs. just six launched Microsoft, Facebook in 2016). Total subsea and Telxius, and boasts cable bandwidth is highest capacity fber expected to double by link between US and 2021, and it is growing Europe at 160 Tbps at 40% CAGR globally. on an eight fber-pair Additionally, there are system. several subsea cables Te second subsea across the Atlantic are cable coming to Virgin- reaching EOL (typical ia, BRUSA is expected lifespan of a subsea ca- to be completed later ble system is 25 years), this year connecting therefore new replace- the state of Virginia ment cable systems are directly to Puerto Rico planned. San Juan and Fortaleza

28 SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE and Rio de Janeiro Brazil. Teses direct international connections will further give the data center community in Virginia more connectivity options for low-latency fast connection to various international destinations. Tis system is wholly owned by Telxius and will of- fer one of the lowest latency communi- cation links between two of the largest economies in the region between the US and Brazil. Recently, a third new subsea cable, SAEx (South Atlantic Express) cable was announced connecting Cape Town in South Africa to Virginia Beach, a distance of approximate- ly 13,050 kms. Tis will be the frst direct connection from South Africa to the US, and it will have a capaci- ty of 72 Tbps. Tis system will have branching units in Saint Helena, Ascension and in Fortaleza, Brazil. SAEx is expected to bring 200 high- tech jobs to Virginia Beach. SAEx will further extend connectivity to Asia in Phase-II of it’s deployment. It will be the frst system to connect the eastern shore of South Africa to the western shore of South Africa. Tere are several over subsea fber projects under consideration for Vir- ginia Beach. A new Subsea Ecosystem is quickly evolving in Virginia Beach. Tis ecosystem is starting to take shape with the new subsea cables that are VINAY NAGPAL acting as a catalyst of driving additional terrestrial fber and has over 23 years of global experience develop- ing data center and connectivity solutions with a strong could eventually lead to content-centric providers such as knowledge of Subsea and Terrestrial fber systems. CDNs, Internet Exchanges, and other eye-ball networks to Vinay has held several senior-level positions at Digital Realty, DuPont Fabros, Tata Communications, Verizon, interconnect at the edge, as depicted in the graphic below. MCI, Digex and UUNET, developing carrier-neutral con- In summary, the Commonwealth of Virginia has attract- nectivity solutions and data center products in US, Canada, ed data centers and connectivity providers from all over London, Singapore, Australia and India. Vinay has served on Open-IX board, leading the formation of standards the country, and also from other parts of the world. Every for distributed Internet Exchanges, and also led the Marketing Committee of major data center provider (retail or wholesale), every major Open-IX Association. Cloud provider, every major terrestrial fber connectivity Currently based out of Washington DC, Vinay serves on the Leadership Board of NVTC Data Center & Cloud Infrastructure Committee, and NVTC provider is in Northern Virginia, and now with the new Executive Circle. Vinay also serves on the Customer Advisory Board of LINX Subsea cables landing on the Virginian shoreline, it will NoVA (London Internet Exchange Northern Virginia), promoting distributed neutral Internet Exchanges, and is actively involved in the Subsea develop- further strengthen the position of Commonwealth of Vir- ments taking place in Virginia Beach. ginia as a major data center and connectivity hub globally, a state truly at the Confuence of fve continents – North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. STF

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