Telxius today announced that its interconnecting both the Dunant and MAREA subsea cables to facilitate the enormous growth of data and content traffic between the United States and Europe. Indeed, the Trans-Atlantic subsea cable network route is one of the busiest in the world. Notably, over 80% of international bandwidth demand on Trans-Atlantic routes is generated by a small number of cloud and content providers. Specifically, these companies include Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.
Dunant Subsea Cable – Overview
The Dunant subsea cable became ready for service in January 2021, cost $165m to build and was funded entirely by Google. Overall, Dunant spans 4.1k miles across the Atlantic Ocean, connecting Virginia Beach, in the U.S. with France. Additionally, Dunant has a capacity of 250 terabits per second, across 12 fiber pairs. Indeed, this makes Dunant the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Google Partners with Orange on Dunant Subsea Cable
Google is partnering with Orange, a French carrier, who built and is operating the cable landing station on France’s west coast, in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez. Orange will also provide fiber backhaul service to Paris. Additionally, a terrestrial fiber network is under construction to extend Dunant to Belgium, where Google is building new data centers.
Telxius Partners with Orange on Dunant Subsea Cable
In February 2020, Orange teamed up with Telxius to collaborate in Europe and the United States on backhaul extensions for the Dunant cable. Under this agreement, Orange and Telxius provide co-location services at their respective cable landing stations. Specifically, these cable landing stations are in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, France and Virginia Beach, U.S.
MAREA Subsea Cable – Overview
The MAREA subsea cable became ready for service in May 2018, cost $165m to build and was funded by Telxius (50%), Facebook (25%), and Microsoft (25%). Notably, MAREA is the first direct link between the United States and Spain, spanning 4.1k miles across the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, MAREA also provides the lowest latency route between the U.S. and Southern Europe.
Additionally, MAREA has a capacity of 200 terabits per second, across 8 fiber pairs. Of these 8 fiber pairs, Facebook and Microsoft are occupying 2 fiber pairs each. Specifically, Facebook and Microsoft are using MAREA to meet their growing need for high-speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services in Europe.
The remaining 4 fiber pairs were originally for Telxius. However, Telxius signed an Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for 1 fiber pair. In turn, this leaves Telxius with use of the remaining 3 fiber pairs on the MAREA subsea cable.
Hyperscale Customer Rationale
For Facebook, MAREA bridges together Facebook’s data centers in North Carolina, Sweden (Luleå), and Ireland (Dublin). Additionally, Microsoft operates two cloud data centers in Virginia, six in Europe and is building-out two new sites in France.
Dunant and MAREA – Telxius Subsea Cable Route
Together, Dunant and MAREA allow Telxius to create one of the lowest latency and highest capacity subsea cable routes globally. With the expansion of the Telxius network on Dunant, the company is bringing diversity and resiliency to its Trans-Atlantic route. Indeed, Telxius’ Trans-Atlantic subsea cable and terrestrial fiber network directly connects Ashburn, Richmond, and Virginia Beach, in the United States to Paris, Madrid, and Bilbao in Europe.
Overall, Dunant and MAREA provide direct access to the largest concentration of data centers globally and key connectivity hubs. The addition of Dunant to Telxius’ portfolio allows customers to benefit from Telxius’ footprint, network capabilities and range of services.
Telxius – Beyond Dunant and MAREA Subsea Cables
Telxius has subsea cable assets in 21 countries and 52 cities worldwide. Specifically, this subsea cable network comprises 20 terabits per second of IP Capacity, 88 points of presence (PoPs), 19 cable landing stations, and 2 redundant network operations centers (NOCs). By the end of 2021, Telxius, a Tier 1 international network, will operate 62k miles of fiber optic cables.
