
Building a subsea cable to better connect Africa - ampersandy
https://engineering.fb.com/connectivity/2africa/
======
supernova87a
This doesn't directly have to do with this article, but in case some people
have not seen it before:

[https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)
"Mother Earth Mother Board"

This is a good hour-long read, one of the most interesting descriptions I ever
read of all that goes into funding, building, operating subsea fiber optic
cables that connect us around the world. It's a couple years out of date, but
very entertaining. Goes from the physics of transmission all the way to the
ships and people who lay the cable.

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
Note to other readers: It requires 2 hours to read.

This is a timeless classic from Wired, written by Neal Stephenson in 1996. I
love this article not only because of the article itself, but its enthusiasm
and energy from the age it was written in. It was an age with a bright future
where everything seems possible. Back at that time, Wired represented the
avant-garde of Silicon Valley (including the fact that Neal Stephenson being
the author) that was going to revolutionize everything through computing and
the Internet, the free and fast flow of information enables decentralization,
and would liberate us from all the old forms of political control.

In particular, this article had a clear techno-libertarian overtone, about how
authoritarianism and monopoly would be defeated through disruptive innovation.
One goal of constructing FLAG (the cable) was explicitly to reduce the
reliance of the infrastructure of the United States and to challenge the role
played by traditional ISP over the control. The article even mentioned the
early cypherpunk movement (in the mid of the first Crypto War), and
acknowledged "Virtually all communications between countries take place
through a very small number of bottlenecks, and the available bandwidth simply
isn't that great. Even outfits like FLAG don't really grok the Internet." But
FLAG was still seen as a step moving towards the correct direction and the
beginning of the new network order.

The dream eventually came to an end. Wired-inspired DotCom bubble busted.
Although FLAG was the first move to break U.S. and traditional ISP's monopoly,
future projects in the next 10 years didn't quite accomplish this goal.
Silicon Valley became the new giant establishment and monopoly (the critics
say massive deregulation was partially responsible). Authoritarian regimes
have done a good job preventing the information flowing online to bring
liberal political changes. And the Internet has been seized as the means of
mass surveillance.

Nevertheless, the late 90s was a great age to be alive with that dream.

~~~
ksec
Off topic.

>Nevertheless, the late 90s was a great age to be alive with that dream.

Music, Art, Tech, everything seems to be better in the 80-90s. An era, just
like the article shown and described where people put heart and soul into it.

I have been thinking a lot about this, still not entirely sure why. And this
isn't nostalgia, I have seen many not born in the era thinking they missed the
"golden age".

Live is definitely better in post 00s, but something is different. Something
is missing.

~~~
iso1631
Everything was always better in the past

Many people say the golden age was the 60s. Or the 20s. Or the 70s. Or the
00s. Or the 50s.

Probably not the 30s and 40s.

There was certainly a change in the 90s, the fall of the Berlin Wall, but
pre-9/11, was a major change in western culture, and that feeling of American
superiority having "won" the cold war

~~~
jacobush
I know 12 year olds who "miss" the 80s. So I think there is more to the 80s
than pure nostalgia from those who were there.

~~~
iso1631
When I was a kid there were 12 year olds that missed the 60s. Nothing to do
with their parents waxing lyrical about how great the 60s were.

------
nujabe
This is tremendous news, I've been waiting for this kind of investment in
Africa from big tech for years. I remember talking to an engineer from AWS
that helps builds their data centers about the challenges of building data
centers in Africa and why none of the big tech companies have barely made any
investments inside the continent outside of SA. He mentioned that a much
bigger problem than the lack of energy infrastructure that everyone assumes is
the biggest hurdle is the lack of connectivity, both to Africa and between
countries. I hope this project paves the way for next phase which is
interconnectivity between countries, which could finally lead to the digital
economic revolution really take place in the continent. You can't have a
'digital economy' with no data centers.

~~~
kitteh
There are several challenges with building a cloud type service in such
locations. Connecting it to the rest of the world is one (backbone links,
etc.). The other is a very local problem: incumbent telcos who generally have
the support of the government. These entities know you are playing in their
territory and they will make you pay more when you're in their backyard.
They'll be happy to peer with you out of their market, but they want you to
pay up locally. It helps when there is competition for broadband and
enterprise connectivity and those players work well, but it's the incumbents
who want to get their beaks wet that result in having to pass a high cost to
customers. This is super common in South America, Middle East and Asia. South
Africa is a bit better now but before it used to be worse. Also this can
extend to getting local/metro fiber if you want to launch multiple
datacenters. Several countries won't even permit you to contract out building
dark fiber in the metropolitan environment - they'll force you to buy much
more expensive lit/wavelength transport so that you have to pay them to scale
up at every 10G or 100G increment.

------
soliosis
I live in Africa. Say what you want, but we need this. Our internet prices are
too high and the quality too low, you can't even start a youtube channel and
upload a decent short video without it taking a day.

Yes there is always a concern about commercial profiteering getting in the way
of the quality of this, but that's to be said for every form of making profit.
We can solve that problem on a systemic level, for now let's take what we can
get.

------
advisedwang
Some more technical details @
[https://www.2africacable.com/](https://www.2africacable.com/):

> go live in 2023/4

> design capacity of up to 180Tbps on key parts of the system

> 16 fibre pairs

> Cable burial depth has also been increased by 50%

Patners: * China Mobile * Facebook * Orange * STC * telecomegypt * Vodafone *
WIOCC

~~~
jeffbee
Interesting in terms of scale. That's only about twice the capacity of the
fiber connecting California and the almost negligibly-populated nation of
Chile. On a per-capita basis Africa needs a lot of cables to Asia and Europe
to gain parity.

~~~
teruakohatu
For comparison the main internet cable connecting my country, New Zealand, to
the USA as 10 tb capacity and the cable connecting us to Australia has around
20 tb, so we have a theoretical maximum of 30 tb of overseas capacity for 4.8
million people (in practice Australian traffic will also be routed over our
USA cable). We should have an additional 70+ tb by the end of 2022 after cable
upgrades (again, shared with Australia).

Africa has 253x the population of NZ.

------
dewey
If you want to find out more about other subsea cables there's always:
[https://www.submarinecablemap.com](https://www.submarinecablemap.com)

~~~
ape4
There are already a bunch along the coast of Africa. Not to say they shouldn't
have more.

~~~
bilbo0s
They should get as many as they can. It's not good to have only the west, or
only china, or only russia controlling their internet access points. If they
play this right, I'm sure china and the west will literally drown them in
bandwidth.

------
curiousgal
I have a dream that the world will stop using "Africa" as a catch-all phrase
for "some African countries".

~~~
Tepix
Do you have reason to believe that the coastal countries with uplinks will not
provide connectivity to their neighbouring countries?

~~~
teddyh
They will surely have _connections_ , but why would they provide _transit_? Is
this a trickle-down theory of connectivity?

~~~
estsauver
I believe many inland countries get their transit through neighbors. For
example, I believe Rwanda gets ~99% of their data through Uganda/Kenya and
Tanzania, and only a tiny bit goes through Satellite. I can't say for sure
nothing goes out through the DRC or Uganda/South Sudan, but I'm pretty sure
it's quite, quite small.

~~~
101404
That is correct. Plus limited satellite uplinks. The undersea cable
connectivity especially in East Aftica sucks. I have the feeling the primary
reason why these cables exist is because they connect South Africa to the huge
cables between Europe and East Asia.

------
bogomipz
I'm confused by why they are calling this cable system "transformative" as the
periphery of Africa is already well served by existing submarine cable:

[https://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-
cables/](https://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/)

It seems like getting terrestrial fiber into the interior of the continent
would be much more impactful. For instance SEACOM was completed in 2008 with
landing stations in Tanzania and Kenya but it took 2 years to lay the
terrestrial cable to get places like Rwanda and Uganda connected to it:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/ozabs-rwanda-telecoms-
idAFJO...](https://www.reuters.com/article/ozabs-rwanda-telecoms-
idAFJOE72F07D20110316)

~~~
iso947
I haven’t had problems with EASSy from Kenya to Europe, but my virtuous run
over epic from mobassa to nairobi on 3 separate cables including one overhead
on electricity pylons. I’ve had no end of problems with those recently, when
all 3 are out at the same time.

------
Tepix
The website is light on details.

What are those dots in front of the coast of Sierra Leone and Liberia? Why are
there two dots at Senegal?

What islands in the Atlantic will be connected? It looks as if the Capverdes
are left out but the Canaries might have a connection to this cable (but there
is no white dot there). I wonder if St. Helena will get lucky. Details please!

------
RyanShook
What are the economics of private investment in subsea cables? Maybe Facebook
traffic gets prioritized?

~~~
Cthulhu_
Facebook can't gain market traction in Africa if there's no decent internet,
so regardless of whether FB will have a direct financial benefit in the
connection, they will have an indirect one.

Assuming FB wins over either Chinese social networks or African-developed and
operated ones of course.

~~~
ejanus
FB is the only social media in town in most of Africa's countries.

------
badrabbit
I would be curious to know how many networks use macsec/.1ae for their
transocean fiber. It makes a big difference in detering surveillance.

~~~
mike_d
Zero. MACSec is for LANs.

Corporations like Google and Facebook leasing wavelengths are doing E2E
encryption in their own upstream gear, but your random ISP hauling cat videos
isn't.

~~~
jauer
Facebook and Google aren't leasing wavelengths and haven't for years.
Sometimes they lease strands, sometimes they own the fiber in the ground and
lease excess to traditional carriers. They own the longhaul equipment that
puts waves on the strands. They own the transponders that takes normal 100GigE
and converts it to waves.

Random ISP may not be running MACSec, but a significant portion of subsea
cable traffic does run over MACSec as it goes between datacenters and from
datacenters to POPs where those cat videos get handed off to ISPs in the same
region.

------
atlgator
I love how they make their mission sound so humanitarian when it's really
about monthly active user growth and data profiles for everyone in the
world... that they can sell. This whole movement of masking profiteering as
social justice is sickening.

~~~
frugalboy
Did you miss the part about Africa getting a 37000km subsea cable that
quadruples their network capacity? What does the motive matter if the end
result is the same?

~~~
drcross
Wait a goddamn minute. FB had a chance to do something positive for the world
with internet.org but they actually backed out when they were forced to obey
net neutrality laws. Make no mistake about it- this is a profit seeking motive
with a potential side effect of increased connectivity. You are a product to
Facebook, something they sell and once consumed your privacy and rights are
left fissured and broken. Don't misconstrue your relationship to them.

~~~
throwaway4715
A "potential side effect"? Don't be ridiculous. The primary purpose is
increased connectivity. Will they profit off that increased connectivity? Yes.
But so will a lot of others. Including many Africans who will be able to take
advantage of new opportunities unlocked by connecting the continent.

------
ksec
Does anyone have any idea how much would such project cost?

I am wondering on the break down of the cost and which part is the most
expensive. Because if "layering" cable is expensive wouldn't be make more
sense to layer more cable in on go? 180Tbps doesn't seems a lot for a
continent as big as Africa.

------
encom
>We are committed to bringing more people online to a faster internet — and
with 3.5 billion people globally unconnected, there is still a lot to do.

Yea, that's 3.5 billion people whose lives haven't been datamined yet by these
scumbags.

~~~
beerandt
Interpreting this wrong at first made me realize the colonial-esque, modern
day exploitation parallels between China and Facebook, especially wrt Africa.

China building ports and rail (with predatory, sovereignty-usurping lending
terms); Facebook building fiber (with ROI measured not in bandwith-revenue,
but captive audience eyeballs). Military bases vs data centers. Power
projected as global military presence vs global advertising market. The
usefulness to each "colonizer" is nothing to do with benevolent investment at
a modest interest rate, but exploitative access, while slinging PR about
providing basic needs to humanity.

Maybe I'm being overly cynical. I generally would be inclined to view this
type of deal as win-win, everyone benefits.

On the other hand, between Facebook and China, I honestly don't know who I
would trust _less_ with _my_ data. Or who to be more suspicious of, being
subject to _their_ algorithms, social engineering, propaganda, agenda, global
ambition, etc.

Of course I say this having multiple vectors of internet access and the
benefit of not being subject to Chinese sovereignty.

~~~
erikrothoff
So a company creating a digital profile on you to sell targeted advertising vs
a country, which is effectively a dictatorship, who has a history of murdering
and imprisoning dissenters without trial, are here lumped into the same evil?
Can we please take down the Facebook hate back to earth?

------
penetrarthur
But Starlink.

~~~
russdill
Initial versions of Starlink will not have laser links and will require ground
stations to operate.

~~~
Tepix
What does that have to do with it?

~~~
russdill
It such a form, it doesn't replace undersea cables.

