Backbone projects of telecommunications giants and maps of underwater communication channels

The amount of human-generated data is growing every year. Accordingly, the volume of traffic transmitted via Internet channels of the whole world is increasing. Most of the information is transmitted and received by telecommunication giants like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon. These companies are not enough current capacity of most communication channels, so they invest in the creation of new highways, often - undersea.

Since projects of this kind are quite complex and expensive, companies are merging. Actually, the reason for the partnership is often not even in money, but in the fact that a number of companies need a reliable channel for receiving and transmitting traffic to the same regions. The most recent example of such a partnership is a joint project of Facebook and Google. The companies initiated the creation of an underwater main line connecting Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

For Facebook, this is the second such project. Last May, a social network joined forces with Microsoft to create a highway connecting land stations in Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA, and Bilbao, Spain. The system is called MAREA, the operator is Telefonica, a Spanish telecommunications company.
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As for the communication channel that connects Los Angeles and Hong Kong, this is one of the most important highways for the telecommunications sector, which provides the ability to transfer large amounts of data across the ocean. The channel capacity is 120 Tbps.

Telecommunications giants are laying undersea highways and together with companies from Asia. Examples of such projects include the New Cross Pacific Cable System (the main investors are Microsoft and a group of Asian companies) as well as the FASTER system, where Google was the initiator.

Last year, it began work as part of implementing its first backbone project and a division of Amazon, Amazon Web Services. As part of this project, called Hawaiki Submarine Cable, AWS decided to build a highway connecting points in the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

Telecommunications giants, realizing that technologies are developing very quickly, make their highways universal. The equipment here is unified, it can be replaced with a newer and more efficient. "This means the ability to upgrade equipment as

improving the production technology of fiber-optic elements and devices, without being tied to a specific type of ground station hardware, said a Facebook representative in 2016.

Now many highways about which telecommunication companies declared earlier, already work. More new communication channels are planned to be created. Below are the trunk maps, which were created thanks to the companies mentioned earlier and that are already working (source - Telegeography ):



Name: AEConnect (AEC)
Lead Partner: Microsoft
Commissioning: January 2016
Length: 5.536 km
Exit points:

• Killala, Ireland;
• Shirley, New York, USA.

Name: MAREA
Main Partner: Microsoft, Facebook
Commissioning: 1st quarter of 2018
Length: 6,600 km
Exit points:

• Bilbao, Spain;
• Virginia Beach, USA.

Title: GTT Express (formerly Hibernia Express)
Lead Partner: Microsoft
Commissioning: September 2015
Length: 4,600 km
Exit points:

• Bren, UK;
• Cork, Ireland;
• Halifax, Canada.

Name: Monet
Main partner: Google
Commissioning: 3rd quarter of 2017
Length: 10.556 km
Exit points:

• Boca Raton, Florida, USA;
• Fortaleza, Brazil;
• Santos, Brazil.

Name: Tannat
Main partner: Google
Commissioning: 4th quarter of 2017
Length: 2000 km

• Exit points:
• Maldonado, Uruguay;
• Santos, Brazil.

Name: Hawaiki Cable
Main Partner: Amazon Web Services
Commissioning: June 2018
Length: 10,200 km
Exit points:

• Capolei, United States;
• Mangawai, New Zealand;
• Pacific City, USA;
• Pago Pago, American Samoa;
• Sydney, Australia.

Name: Unity / EAC-Pacific
Main partner: Google
Commissioning: March 2010
Length: 9620 km
Exit points:

• Chikura, Japan;
• Redondo Beach, USA.

Name: FASTER
Main partner: Google
Commissioning: June 2016
Length: 11,629 km
Exit points:

• Bandon, Oregon, USA;
• Chikura, Japan;
• Tangshui, Taiwan.

Name: New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable System
Lead Partner: Microsoft
Commissioning: June 2016
Length: 13,618 km
Exit points:

• Chunming, China;
• Lingang, China;
• Maruyama, Japan;
• Nanhui, China;
• Pacific City, USA;
• Busan, Korea;
• Tocheng, Taiwan.

Name: Asia Pacific Gateway (APG)
Main partner: Facebook
Commissioning: November 2016
Length: 10400 km
Exit points:

• Chunming, China;
• Da Nang, Vietnam;
• Kuantan, Malaysia;
• Maruyama, Japan;
• Nanhui, China;
• Busan, Korea;
• Tocheng, Taiwan;
• Shima, Japan;
• Songkla, Thailand;
• Tanah Merah, Singapore;
• Chonquangow New Town, Hong Kong.

Name: Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN)
Main partner: Google, Facebook
Commissioning: May 2018
Length: 12,800 km
Exit points:

• Manhattan Beach, USA;
• Chonquangow New Town, Hong Kong.

In general, large telecommunication companies successfully solve their own problems of transmitting and receiving increasing volumes of traffic in various regions. Gradually, the communication channels become more, and this opens up new business opportunities, which allows the telecommunications sector to grow.

And finally: in order to test our channels, we have prepared a special web test page on our website . Choose the desired location: USA (New York, California), the Netherlands or Russia. After that, you can apply for a free test of any service up to 30 days for free, but this is relevant for corporate customers only.