
Google’s Equiano Cable Will Extend to the Remote Island of Saint Helena - jonbaer
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/googles-equiano-cable-will-extend-to-the-remote-island-of-saint-helena-flooding-it-with-data
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walrus01
There are still a LOT of islands on earth that don't have submarine fiber
connectivity.

Disclaimer: I work in two-way satellite telecom.

Until the advent of o3b, these were pretty much entirely dependent on various
methods of connecting to the outside world via commercial geostationary
transponder kHz leases, in the C and Ku bands. Works fine, but minimum 492ms
latency return trip, and very expensive in monthly recurring cost per Mbps.

o3b has helped a great deal, in terms of monthly $/Mbps and latency. Further
medium earth orbit and low earth orbit things (starlink, oneweb, amazon's
kuiper) will help even more.

Due to the high cost of submarine cable construction, unless places happen to
be roughly along the route that the cable would be taking anyways (as St.
Helena is), there will remain a lot of places where 100% of the WAN link to
the outside world will be some combination of LEO/MEO/GEO satellite access.

"Modern" satellite modems that are capable of advanced computation for low
density parity codes and advanced FEC methods, plus adaptive coding and
modulation to deal with Ku and Ka band rain fade, those certainly help a lot.
It still costs a ridiculous amount to build and launch a 3000 to 6500 kilogram
sized satellite into geostationary orbit. I am cautiously optimistic that
SpaceX's lower launch costs due to reusable rockets will help with this.

Full deployment of the LEO starlink constellation economically seems to be
predicated upon the use of a cargo-carrying reusable version of the Starship,
which would be able to place many hundreds of satellites in one launch.

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madaxe_again
Forgive me if I’m missing something obvious, but who is financing this?
Google?

DfID have ruled out funding, and it’s unlikely St H will get any further EU
regional funding.

So - either they’re going to be taking an almighty loan, or rely on the
kindness of corporations.

I can’t see St H becoming a tech hub. It’s a lovely place, sure, but they’d
need immigration of people with technical skills for that - I can count on one
hand the number of saints with computer literacy, and they don’t want/can’t
support any kind of immigrant population. Apart from anything else, all houses
are occupied, and there’s precious little land upon which to build in
Jamestown, and the saints do _not_ want high rises and all the rest. No, I
don’t speak for them, but I have spoken with them, and it’s pretty clear which
way the wind blows.

I hope they do get a better connection to the world, but I fear practicality
will get in the way. If they do plough ahead and assume the debt (I am
assuming that there will be a debt to google), then the rumblings in Whitehall
of making crown dependencies responsible for their own budgets might get
louder. Their airport (which is perfectly fine, by the by, stunning approach)
continues to attract flack as an ill conceived and expensive boondoggle.

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danellis
You're right that there's no native tech talent in a tiny population like
that, but who says they don't want any kind of immigrant population?
Presumably it doesn't take thousands of people to keep an Earth station
running after it's built. I mean, look at less-populated Ascension Island with
its BBC relay station.

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madaxe_again
Oh, indeed - it will take but a handful of people to manage, as the C&W dish
currently does.

But therein lies the problem. It’s unclear what the economic uplift would be,
and how it would pay for itself. If it’s simply a convenient waystation for
the cable, great, but it doesn’t seem to be, so to me, the reasoning is
unclear.

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walrus01
You might be surprised how much is being paid in transponder kHz lease monthly
recurring costs, and earth station services on the other end, to provide
internet and WAN phone services for the entire population of St Helena. Using
submarine fiber might have an ROI under 15 years, if the additional cost to
bring the cable to the island (vs bypass it entirely with same cable) is
slightly government subsidized.

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BurningFrog
If you read the article, the Equiano cable is actually only connecting South
Africa, Nigeria and Portugal, aside from Saint Helena.

The "SAEx" cable that's drawn into the map "failed to secure funding"...

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raxxorrax
I would immigrate to an island in the middle of nowhere in a heartbeat. But
only if it had a reliable internet connection.

Sad state of affairs really, because the costs are probably insurmountable for
the islands inhabitants. I believe they are glad if they manage to maintain an
airport.

Satellite based net access isn't my favorite, but probably the more realistic
option.

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lifty
Canary Islands have good internet connectivity. At least Tenerife does.
Beautiful and affordable place too.

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eyko
It's not in the middle of nowhere though.

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daxterspeed
This looks like an incredibly forward thinking move. Connecting South America
to Africa will provide the opportunity for a wast array of new inter-
continental online businesses, focused on countries that today aren't seen as
"online hubs".

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killjoywashere
I'm willing to bet Google puts a Loon groundstation on that island. They've
been moving south from Puerto Rico to Peru and Kenya. This is in between.

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jonbaer
[https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/introd...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/introducing-
equiano-a-subsea-cable-from-portugal-to-south-africa)

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ryanmarsh
"space-division multiplexing"

LOL, you mean "stringing another wire/fiber". I think we used to call this
"bonding".

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adrianmonk
I'm not a hardware engineer or anything, but apparently it's a little more
innovative than that. From Google's page
([https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/a-quic...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/a-quick-
hop-across-the-pond-supercharging-the-dunant-subsea-cable-with-sdm-
technology)) about the previous cable which uses it:

> _Traditional subsea cables are powered from the shore end and rely on a
> dedicated set of pump lasers to amplify the optical signal for each fiber
> pair as data traverses the length of the cable. Now, SDM technology allows
> pump lasers and associated optical components to be shared among multiple
> fiber pairs, while still working within the unique power constraints of the
> ocean floor._

I don't profess to understand laser pumping, but it sounds like they found a
way for multiple fiber pairs to share expensive and/or power-hungry active
components. So it is stringing another fiber, but in layman's terms maybe kind
of like network bonding by figuring out a trick to plug two ethernet cables
into one port.

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sunstone
Nice place to hang out in the Western European time zone.

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techntoke
What about LEO broadband? I mean, I get that space junk is an issue too but it
seems better to invest in global Internet via satellite.

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walrus01
Given a choice between terrestrial singlemode fiber, and LEO, the satellite
system (Starlink, Oneweb, Kuiper, whatever) should always be the second
choice. Shannon limit and RF engineering considerations mean that the total
capacity of spot beams passing over a given area will be a lot less than
fiber.

Looking at the population of St. Helena I would be very surprised if the
entire nation-state/island uses more than a single 100GbE wavelength back to
the cable landing stations in the US/Europe.

From a landing station in St. Helana, access can be distributed by some
combination of GPON fiber, terrestrial fixed PTP and PTMP wireless, maybe re-
use of existing copper with vdsl2, g.fast, DOCSIS3/DOCSIS3.1, etc.

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dboreham
Also have to factor in the NSA bandwidth requirements..

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thinkloop
Their options are almost no internet or all the internet.

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provolone
Maybe they can become a casino hosting jurisdiction?

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reaperducer
I'm of mixed feelings about this. Yes, it's great for the people of Saint
Helena. But it would be nice if we could have a few remote places on Earth
stay remote.

AT&T is lobbying the federal government for permission to put cell towers in
Death Valley. Death Valley is fine without them. It doesn't need more tourist
conveniences. It has"Death" in its name for a reason.

On the other hand, if this is something the people of Saint Helena voted for
and approved, then it's up to them. I just hope it wasn't pushed on them by a
bureaucrat.

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todd3834
Sometimes you have to drive through Death Valley to get to other places and
cell reception is kind of important in a place like that. Imagine having a
baby in your car, it breaks down with no cell reception and it's 130F
temperatures outside

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walrus01
If you plan to go somewhere that leaving the main highway, and mechanical
failure of your vehicle means there is a high likelihood of death, you should
be going in groups of more than one vehicle and taking an Iridium satellite
phone with you.

Expecting cellular coverage in places that are literally "the middle of
fucking nowhere" is not reasonable. Remote parts of the western US states are
too sparsely populated for this to make economic sense for cellular carriers.

People spend a thousand bucks on all sorts of frivolous stuff. For way less
than that you can buy a gently used Iridium 9555 on eBay and a few new
batteries for it, and a 20W folding solar panel.

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todd3834
Who said anything about leaving the main highway? Is AT&T trying to provide
signal where they know nobody will ever go? That sounds odd. I assumed we were
talking about places humans go

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walrus01
All of the death valley fatalities I'm aware of are from people who left the
main highway. I've driven through there. As long as you stick to the main,
paved roads, there is sufficient car traffic that it is highly unlikely you're
going to die from a car breakdown.

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todd3834
Maybe so but cell service would still be nice.

