How is the subsea cable boom transforming global data flows?

Cloud services, video streaming and gaming are driving the flourishing submarine cable industry.

See the original article by Ellen Tannam at SiliconRepublic.

July 22, 2022

As the world becomes even more intricately connected than ever before, some serious infrastructural work is underway to keep up with the public demand, the volume of connected devices and the advent of enterprise cloud systems. Subsea cables are a massive piece of this puzzle.

Siliconrepublic.com spoke with NJFX CEO Gil Santaliz about the future of connectivity.

How long do you foresee the subsea cable building boom lasting?

The last refresh of subsea cables happened about two decades ago. As those cables near their end of life, this building boom is underway. We expect the build-out to focus not only on necessity of connectivity and capacity, but how that relates to security as well.

The new cables will create security by creating redundant routes – if one path goes down, another one is still available. Also, having secure and resilient facilities where these cables land is increasingly important. Specifically in the transatlantic, we expect potentially two more cables, which would bring the number to five, replacing the existing 11 in various stages of retirement.

What other drivers besides cloud are fuelling this current spike in building?

The biggest change we’ve seen in the current building boom is the structure of the financing. OTTs [over-the-top applications] such as Facebook and Google are helping to fund these very expensive projects. Many of them include a consortium model, with major OTTs as part of the funding group.

I think the reason for this is that content requiring more bandwidth than ever before makes up most of the traffic on these cables – I’m referring to video for the most part, but also gaming, live streaming and other applications like that.

Data demand for these apps, particularly from smartphones, is fuelling this. Before, we were sending just text, now it’s graphics, photos, video or even live video. Its real-time content, virtual reality and AI.

What innovations in the space have enabled projects to be completed quickly?

The funding coming from OTTs is helping more cables become ready for service in the second half of this decade than I think anyone expected, plus the ships have steady work, allowing them to ramp up their deployments.

What positives will the world see in the next five years due to subsea infrastructure?

You’re going to see applications, maybe some which may be invented in the United States and used in other parts of the world. You can even test or try things that are not in the geographical location you are in.

We are all going to be connected all the time, everywhere – collaboration in medicine, engineering, research, news and entertainment.

Is the current rate of manufacturing sustainable?

The most recent boom in subsea cable construction is notable for its geographic scope. The new subsea cables help create a redundancy with routes that we have not yet seen. Latin America has made significant investment in new cables.

Most routes around the globe are getting an upgrade with new cables, plus we are seeing new routes and new cables to connect places that were not before.

Shorter cables will continue in growth as a better, more reliable way to interconnect, such as the NJFX routes to Long Island and Boca. Perhaps some older systems with some time still left will want to move to carrier-neutral campuses.

Why do cables beat satellites in terms of connectivity?

Today, 99pc of international communications touch a subsea cable. Satellites are more expensive and more susceptible to disruption (weather etc).

What exactly is colocation and what are the business benefits?

Colocation refers to the landing station and the delivery systems being at the same spot. For example, at NJFX, we provide our customers the ability to choose how they interconnect domestic networks with international subsea systems.

The union of cable systems and data centres brings connectivity right to the edge, reducing latency. Colocation is also a plus if the location is not a traditional choke point, like Manhattan for example. Being located outside traditional congestion points is beneficial for route diversity.

This also helps with new connectivity solutions for carriers. We are reducing legacy points of failure by allowing an open marketplace where subsea cables actually land in the US.

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About NJFX:

NJFX is a Tier 3 Carrier Neutral Cable Landing Station campus. Our colocation ecosystem has expanded to over 35 network operators offering flexibility, reliability, and security. Our Wall, NJ location provides direct access to multiple subsea cable systems giving our carriers diverse connectivity solutions and offers direct interconnection without recurring cross-connect fees.

Aqua Comms’ Digital Bridge: Providing Unique Infrastructure for Carriers

Newsroom / NJFX

Aqua Comms’ Digital Bridge: Providing Unique Infrastructure for Carriers

July 2, 2018

Cisco Global 2020 Forecast predicts global Internet traffic will be 5.3 exabytes a day in less than two years. By 2020, global internet traffic will equal 484 billion DVDs running each year, 40 billion DVDs each month, or 55 million DVDs per hour. In 2020, the gigabyte equivalent of all the movies ever made will cross the Internet every two minutes.

This anticipated growth is staggering. The industry is addressing this growth through new subsea cables, which will serve as the infrastructure to carry all of this traffic. Let’s take a closer look at one such subsea cable operator, Aqua Comms DAC. A new era of cable building on the Atlantic was marked with the launch of Aqua Comms’ America-Europe Connect 1 (AEConnect -1) cable, which runs from Shirley, New York, to Killala, County Mayo, in the far western reaches of Ireland. Designed for resilience, the cable has dual, diverse backhauls through Dublin and then travels on to London.

Nigel Bayliff, CEO for Aqua Comms and a longtime industry leader, commented, “Fifteen years ago, there were seven to eight cables that were built, and those cables were part of a massive oversupply to the requirements of the day. Pricing for the building of cables shot through the roof.”

While this left an oversupply in the market, all of that is coming to an end due to the massive amounts of bandwidth demands and requirements of enterprises, carriers, Over-the-Top (OTT) providers, financial firms, government entities and other high capacity organizations.

Older cable systems typically have a technical life of about 25 years and according to Bayliff, there are many reasons why these cables will start retiring and new cable systems will replace them.

“When economic opportunity came along for Aqua Comms, we jumped on it and worked with partners such as Facebook, Google, and Bulk,” commented Bayliff. “OTTs have massive requirements between a couple of points across an ocean and are leveraging private network links – not public telecom networks.”

As Bayliff explained, these OTT providers are now taking advantage of ownership grade economics since the technology now allows them to increase the capacity on the fiber pair.

In demonstration of that new model, Aqua Comms announced earlier this year that it is part of the consortium of the new HAVFRUE cable system, which traverses the North Atlantic to connect mainland Northern Europe to the U.S. Aqua Comms is the appointed system operator and landing party in the U.S., Ireland, and Denmark, and the company will market and sell capacity services and raw spectrum on its portion of the HAVFRUE cable system under the brand name America Europe Connect-2 (AEC-2).

AEC-2 infrastructure network services will be delivered to and from NJFX’s Tier 3 carrier-neutral colocation facility, in Wall, New Jersey, and 1025Connect in Westbury, New York, on Long Island. Bypassing the typical telecom route which often goes through New York City, this offers added network diversity and resiliency.

Addressing Innovation

When the latest upgrade of cable systems was completed nearly 20 years ago, smartphones barely existed. It is important for bandwidth players to have enough redundancy built across these cable systems to support their massive bandwidth needs.

Just one example is Facebook Live, which broadcasts content immediately so that someone who wants to share their child’s birthday party with a loved one on another continent can do so in real time. The live nature of the traffic requires bandwidth paths that can carry that content quickly and reliably. There are millions of users across the globe who need enormous amounts of live capacity.

In contrast, Netflix doesn’t necessarily need to run a fiber pair across the Atlantic because the content goes out to many caches first. So whether a user is seeking connectivity to support Facetime, making a What’s App video or getting sights, smells and sounds from an Augmented Virtual Reality application, much more bandwidth is required. Even if the application requires a minute amount of data, the data must flow constantly in order for the application to work properly.

“The industry is at a critical and very interesting juncture,” commented Gil Santaliz, the Founder and CEO of NJFX. “NJFX serves as a physical North American subsea communication hub for subsea cables from South America and Europe. Our location at the Cable Landing Stations is a win for carriers, OTTs, and service providers who need a carrier-neutral interconnection point. Not only can they reduce costs but create economies of scale – all which pave the way for even more growth and innovation.”

Innovative providers like Aqua Comms look where there are private cables and bring together more value to deliver a conjoined solution. As Bayliff commented, the company is “very good at building cables and doesn’t want to be all things to all people. We are seeking to be the best that we can be.”

As a true carriers’ carrier, Aqua Comms doesn’t sell to enterprises or end-users. “We sell to carriers, ISPs and content providers,” Bayliff added, “all with a very focused and experienced senior-level team.”

Additional coverage of this story available Here.

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About NJFX:

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New Route for Caribbean Traffic Brings Greater Resiliency

Newsroom / NJFX

New Route for Caribbean Traffic Brings Greater Resiliency

See the original article at SubCableWorld

June 22, 2018

Editor’s Note: As we have learned over the years, telecom networks face many threats – from natural disasters to backhoes to fishing boats. The telecom industry has responded by making networks more diverse and resilient. But the challenges continue. Storms are becoming stronger, capable of doing an unprecedented amount of damage. How do you prepare for the next one when it might be stronger than any previous storm?

The submarine cable industry is responding with innovative new concepts. Learning from each outage, the industry has for years been building more resiliency into their networks – coming up with more secure ways to move traffic.

The 2017 hurricane season was the costliest in history, with Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria devastating large parts of the Caribbean and Gulf Coast. With the 2018 season beginning, it is worth reflecting on what happened last year and how the industry is responding.

With this in mind, we recently spoke with Felix Seda General Manager, NJFX, and Jose Casillas, General Manager, PREPA, Networks about a new service that their companies, along with Telecom Italia, are offering that provides an all-wet route from NJFX’s cable landing facilities in New Jersey to the Caribbean, while bypassing Miami.

Felix Seda: NJFX operates “Tier 3 by the Subsea,” the world’s first colocation campus that strategically intersects a carrier neutral subsea cable landing station meet-me room with a Tier 3, carrier neutral data center. The 64,800-square foot purpose-built data center offers direct access to multiple independent subsea cable systems that interconnect North America, Europe, and South America. High and low-density colocation solutions are available with 24/7 support as well as unique US fiber back-haul solutions that avoid traditional legacy network points of failure. NJFX’s offerings provide the flexibility, reliability and security that global carriers, content providers, enterprise and government entities require to drive revenue, reduce expenses and improve service quality.

TI Sparkle is currently a customer of NJFX. They were already providing access down to Brazil via their Seabras-1 cable capacity out of NJFX. What we are focusing on now is that they are providing a new route from NJFX that bypasses Miami and goes down to the Caribbean. The wet route that avoids the legacy terrestrial routes that have historically been located in the hurricane zones around Miami. As we all know, we have been ravaged by Mother Nature with hurricanes in the Caribbean and the Miami area. Sparkle has solved a problem that has been plaguing the industry for a number of years with this new diverse wet route going all the way down to the Caribbean, bypassing Miami and New York, both legacy choke points and Miami being a hurricane zone.

This is a complete diverse wet route that bypasses all of that legacy terrestrial infrastructure. We are getting a lot of positive feedback just from initial conversations. It has completely solved an issue that has been plaguing the industry for years in terms of getting down into the Caribbean whether it be from the United States, Europe, or even Canada. We have a number of customers coming down from Canada and Europe –banks and other high-traffic users – that have traffic going down to the Caribbean and this new route will definitely help them to provide diversity and strengthen their network.

It can serve as a redundant, diverse, backup route to those customers down to the Caribbean but it also can be a primary route for anyone else who has a need for reliable communications to that region.

In terms of traffic, we’re seeing an increase of capacity in general and to the Caribbean in particular. The subsea cables are much safer in terms of avoiding issues that the terrestrial routes tend to be plagued with.

We are very optimistic about this service for the future. It is something that customers have been asking for. The route down to the Caribbean and Latin America has been a highly popular route in recent times and what TI Sparkle is doing is basically innovating a solution to the problem that nobody else has been able to do so far.

Jose Casillas: PREPA Networks is an infrastructure provider in the Caribbean. It is a wholesale telecommunications company. We are based in Puerto Rico where we have our main facilities. We provide telecom infrastructure to carriers in the region. We also provide connectivity to leading carriers from the states to Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean. Within Puerto Rico, we provide cable landing services for many of the international submarine cables that connect the island to the rest of the United States, as well as the Caribbean, South America and ultimately throughout the world.

We are a facilities provider for the carriers. We do not provide retail services; only facilities. We have one of the main cable landing stations in Puerto Rico, which is the most connected island in the region. We provide connectivity and cable landing services to five of the international cables that connect Puerto Rico.

During the 2017 hurricane season, most of the cable stations remained operational through Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico. Only one of the stations, operated by another company, was down at all. It was flooded and had to be evacuated until they had everything under control and then they were able to bring the station back online. Other than that, all of the cable stations performed as expected; before, during and after the storm.

Puerto Rico, as an island, is limited in terms of access to resources after an event. That is something that you plan for but there is no substitute for real-life experience. So once Maria went over, all of the essential transportation systems – airports, roads, everything — was closed. Nothing was working. On top of that, there was no telecommunications. Most of the other sites in the states or in other countries have large highways networks or other ways of transporting goods. But we can only get vital goods to the island by air or sea.

So we had no access to fuel. We had plans where our facilities could stand for 15-20 days without fuel, but at the time that you design these facilities nobody says “well we will be without fuel for so many days.” Once you are in the emergency, you run into unexpected problems. In our case to convince the federal government to start releasing the fuel to essential facilities like a submarine cable landing station. So you learn about things that you have to take into consideration for the future. Like adding additional fuel capacity for longer periods of an event.

In the case or Maria, we were able to solve the problem within seven days. We were able to talk to the federal officials and access a fuel line through the port and were able to deliver the fuel to our facilities and then we had no problem. We ran the facilities for 42 days on generators until the power utilities were up and running again. Fuel is a major resource that we have to plan for in the future.

Once you are in an unprecedented event, you start finding new things that you did consider during the design. We could not anticipate it to be as harsh as it was – nothing like this had ever happened before. But you learn. And you find ways to improve that facility to provide more resiliency. I believe that we will learn from this event. We learned that we need access to fuel for longer terms. Because we are an island, the logistics get very complicated. It was a harsh test and we learned from it.

We have been working with NJFX to come up with a way of bypassing Miami and providing an alternative route for connectivity to the Caribbean. One of the goals when we started the HUB787 project back in 2010 was to establish a facility that could be used to provide bypass. HUB787 is a division of PREPA Networks. It is an interconnection and peering center for the Caribbean, with a Tier 3 data center and an ultra-modern submarine cable station. Last year we were able to work with NJFX, which resulted in TI Sparkle agreeing to extend their submarine cable connectivity into HUB787. So now we can provide a bypass around the Miami site for traffic from the mainland to Puerto Rico, throughout the Caribbean and down to South America. In terms of robustness and resiliency, if you have any problems going through Miami, you can migrate your traffic directly from NJFX to HUB787 through TI Sparkle facilities and you will still have connectivity to New York City, which most of our finest customers here request. And also the NJFX facility provides access to Europe through the transatlantic cables that land there.

So this is something that is new for the region that you have an option that you can collocate, use as your computing facility, or use as your bypass facility in case there is a disaster event that disrupts your connectivity to Miami.

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About NJFX:

Windstream Wholesale Bolsters Fiber Transport Network at NJFX

Newsroom / NJFX

Windstream Wholesale Bolsters Fiber Transport Network at NJFX

Windstream Wholesale is fortifying its fiber transport network at NJFX’s Tier 3 carrier-neutral colocation campus, located at the cable landing station in Wall, NJ.

See the original article at Channel Vision

July 22, 2022

WALL TOWNSHIP, NJ –

Offering protected backbone network services, along with a portfolio of data, cloud and managed services, Windstream Wholesale is laser-focused on optimizing its customers’ cloud connectivity resources, as well as providing the bandwidth required to support the constantly growing data traffic of today’s world.

As a major U.S. carrier, Windstream Wholesale’s presence at NJFX — strategically located where subsea cables from the U.S., Europe and South America meet at the easternmost edge of the U.S. — allows the company to securely connect with global network providers.

In addition to its broad portfolio of highly available, fiber optic transport solutions, Software Defined Network Orchestrated Wavelengths (SDNow) from Windstream Wholesale lays the foundation for on-demand services, accelerated deployments and improved customer experience. The combination of these services helps enterprise and wholesale customers enable cloud connectivity and pave the way for digital transformation.

Windstream Wholesale can further support its North American network with highly valuable services from NJFX’s Tier 3 facility while also offering a route that bypasses New York City traffic that more efficiently connects to in-demand locations such as Miami, Atlanta, Denver, Ashburn, Chicago, Dallas, Columbus and Los Angeles. The NJFX relationship allows Windstream Wholesale to provide services to the federal, financial and the carrier community with direct access to subsea cables — typically restricted in a cable landing station — within a non-competitive, secure and closed environment.

“What Windstream Wholesale offers at the NJFX colocation campus is a reliable, high-quality option for organizations coming in internationally, looking for connectivity options in the U.S,” commented Joe Scattareggia, president of Windstream Wholesale. “This newest project is an overbuild of a system with newer, updated technology. As a more cost-effective and efficient solution, our customers will now have even greater access to the cable landing station in Wall, NJ. We are building a diverse path—particularly the Ashburn route, which avoids the busy Philadelphia metro — along with an upgrade of existing services, with increased and accelerated installation time frames, resulting in significantly service delivery.”

“Carriers and service providers are now realizing that they need to position themselves to meet the challenge of increased capabilities and capacities for themselves, as well as their end users. NJFX is helping to make this possible,” confirmed Gil Santaliz, founder and CEO of NJFX.

###

About NJFX:

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Innovation at Lightning Speed – Connectivity MUST Keep Pace

Newsroom / NJFX

Innovation at Lightning Speed – Connectivity MUST Keep Pace

June 14, 2018

Windstream Wholesale is fortifying its fiber transport network at NJFX’s Tier 3 carrier-neutral colocation campus, located at the cable landing station in Wall, NJ. Offering protected backbone network services, along with a portfolio of data, cloud and managed services, Windstream Wholesale is laser-focused on optimizing its customers’ cloud connectivity resources, as well as providing the bandwidth required to support the constantly growing data traffic of today’s world.

As a major U.S. carrier, the Windstream Wholesale’s presence at NJFX’s facility—strategically located where subsea cables from the U.S., Europe and South America meet at the United States’ easternmost edge—allows the company to securely connect with global network providers. In addition to its broad portfolio of highly available, fiber optic transport solutions, Software Defined Network Orchestrated Wavelengths (SDNow) from Windstream Wholesale lays the foundation for on-demand services, accelerated deployments and improved customer experience. The combination of these services helps enterprise and wholesale customers enable cloud connectivity and pave the way for digital transformation.

Windstream Wholesale can further support their North American network with highly valuable services from NJFX’s Tier 3 facility while also offering a route that bypasses New York City traffic that more efficiently connects to in-demand locations such as Miami, Atlanta, Denver, Ashburn, Chicago, Dallas, Columbus and Los Angeles. The NJFX relationship allows Windstream Wholesale to provide services to the federal, financial and the carrier community with direct access to subsea cables—typically restricted in a cable landing station—within a non-competitive, secure and closed environment.

“What Windstream Wholesale offers at the NJFX colocation campus is a reliable, high-quality option for organizations coming in internationally, looking for connectivity options in the U.S,” commented Joe Scattareggia, president of Windstream Wholesale. “This newest project is an overbuild of a system with newer, updated technology. As a more cost-effective and efficient solution, our customers will now have even greater access to the cable landing station in Wall, NJ. We are building a diverse path—particularly the Ashburn route, which avoids the busy Philadelphia metro—along with an upgrade of existing services, with increased and accelerated installation time frames, resulting in significantly service delivery,” stated Scattareggia.

More information on Windstream’s national footprint and long-haul core network can be found on the company’s Interactive Map.

Additional coverage of this story available from Converge! Network Digest.

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About NJFX:

Fiber Diversity Drives Crosslake Underwater

Newsroom / NJFX

Fiber Diversity Drives Crosslake Underwater

See the original article at Lightreading Here

June 8, 2018

The explosion in demand for diverse sources of bandwidth is fueling the business case for one dark fiber provider that is using subsea optical cables to cross lakes, not oceans. Crosslake Fibre is starting with a submarine cable across Lake Ontario to connect Toronto and Buffalo, but has plans for other projects in North America as well.

The drivers for the initial project are clear, says Crosslake Fibre Inc. CEO Mike Cunningham: It’s not just about the bandwidth, it’s also about the path.

“If you are coming out of Toronto, the other cables share the same physical rights-of-way so diversity is a big driver for us, in addition to the fact we are adding new connectivity in a region where long-haul connectivity is somewhat constrained,” he says in an interview. “We are serving that route in a unique way that adds the additional benefit of being a physically diverse path.”

Toronto is in the distance in this view of Lake Ontario.

Crosslake sells dark fiber exclusively, primarily to other telecom service providers, who increasingly find their customers want diversity in fiber routing to make sure one fiber cut doesn’t wipe out their primary and backup cables. The shorter distances covered allows the Canadian-based company to do non-repeatered submarine cable that don’t require landing sites, making the construction process a bit easier by eliminating the need for power and more elaborate shelters.

In less than two years, Cunningham and crew have identified two projects, Lake Ontario and a second cable they are calling Wall-LI, which will connect Wall, N.J., and the New Jersey Fiber Exchange (NJFX) to Westbury, N.Y., and the 1025Connect carrier hotel facility on Long Island. The Ontario cable is due to be ready for service in the fall of 2018 with the second project expected to be up and running a year from now. (See Interconnections & the Escape From New York.)

Smaller subsea segments will become more important going forward, says Gil Santaliz, founder and CEO of NJFX.

“We will be using more of these,” he says. “They are important both as shortcuts — so you don’t have to go around a body of water — and as a means of diverse routing. Crosslake is leading the charge.”

Cunningham admits, however, that growing by leaps and bounds may not be his company’s plan, as each project is somewhat unique and driven by the specifics of the geography and the surrounding market. The company has private equity backing — Tiger Infrastructure is an announced backer — and establishes market demand for each site before committing capital, he says.

“Every project is challenging just from pulling different pieces together – identifying the opportunity and putting a cost to actually develop the project and making that fit with the sales that we need to get to move the project forward,” Cunningham says.

There are also issues around permitting, and since this is not a well-developed field as yet, Crosslake has to work with a variety of local and regional officials to get the access it needs and, in some cases, educate them as to the importance of these projects, he adds.

“There’s definitely a learning curve for agencies and authorities,” Cunningham comments. “It is pretty low impact, what we do — especially if we adopt best practices.”

Once on dry land, Crosslake typically connects to a carrier hotel, like NJFX, to reach the broadest range of potential customers for its dark fiber services.

— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, Light Reading

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About NJFX:

Interconnections & the Escape From New York

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Interconnections & the Escape From New York

See the original article by Carol Wilson here at Light Reading

July 22, 2022

CHICAGO – International Telecoms Week – “Escape from New York” seems to be an emerging theme at this massive event, where global wholesalers, subsea cable operators, data center and interconnect companies and network operators alike all meet to do business. Increasingly, that business is purposefully moving out of Manhattan, where once large carrier hotels like 60 Hudson dominated the landscape.

According to multiple sources here, cloud providers, carriers and enterprises alike are looking for diversity and the ability to avoid the vulnerability of taking the bulk of their traffic into the Big City.

Telecom Italia Sparkle , the international service arm of Italy’s TIM Group, today announced a “wet” fiber connecting the New Jersey Fiber Exchange (NJFX)directly to Boca Raton, Fla., from where it can offer direct connections to the Caribbean or South America, as well as the Equinix NAP of the Americas in Miami, a major interconnection point. A much smaller interconnection and colocation operator, 1025Connect , is here touting its Long Island-based facilities which next week will formally host DE-CIX Management GmbH , the Internet exchange company that is based in Frankfort, Germany, but is now boasting the highest number of North American access points, and will gain access to 160 networks with this move.

“What people are trying to do is avoid pinch points, and New York City is a pinch point,” says Gil Santaliz, founder and CEO of NJFX. What Sparkle is doing is repurposing a subsea cable it acquired with about eight terabits of capacity by connecting it to NJFX and terminating the fiber at Boca Raton, Fla., he explains. From either of those spots, traffic can go to New York and Miami, but it can also avoid those pinch points and go anywhere else including, on the southern end, to the Caribbean and South America.

“If there are two buildings in the US you don’t want to lose today, it’s NAP of the Americas and 60 Hudson St.,” Santaliz says in an interview here. “If you lose one or both of those buildings, it’s pretty catastrophic for the US and the communications industry. [Sparkle] just solved that problem.” Two other industry trends — carrier consolidation and the cloud explosion — factor into this deal as well, he notes. The former has reduced the number of operators building and running physical facilities along the I-95 corridor between New York and Miami, while the latter has reshaped where network traffic is going, making data center interconnection the priority.

“Ashburn [Va., an Internet and data center hotbed] didn’t exist 20 years ago when most of today’s fiber routes were put in,” he notes.

Subsea connections weren’t considered a cost-effective approach to handling telecom traffic when that major fiber buildout occurred, Santaliz notes, but the combination of the bandwidth boom and technology advancements is changing that.

Companies such as Crosslake Fibre are capitalizing on this trend by offering connections between Toronto and Buffalo that are partially subsea, and also connections between NJFX in Wall, NJ and the 1025 Connect facility in Westbury, NY.

Dan Lunde, managing director of 1025 Connect, notes that his company is more of “boutique carrier hotel” and much smaller than NJFX, but it is still capitalizing on the same trend of carriers looking for connections, especially to subsea cables, that don’t require dependence on Manhattan-based carrier hotels. 1025 Connect provides direct submarine cable access to six different transatlantic cable systems in its facility and five different Manhattan bypass fiber routes including those operated by Altice and Lightower.

“People want to connect in different places,” Lunde says in an interview. “They are looking for diversity. In our case, they can come from Europe, hit our facility and then go down to [NJFX] and avoid Manhattan entirely.”

DE-CIX is already selling Internet connectivity based on its 1025 Connect facilities, he says, offering connections to 160-plus networks in the New York metro area but also the ability to bypass Manhattan using — potentially — the Altice fiber route through 360 Hamilton Ave., in White Plains, NY, or the Cross Sound Cable System to New Haven, Conn.

Being based on Long Island also lets 1025 Connect offer lower-cost interconnection which Lunde says it enhances by charging only for space and power and not layering on multiple fees for cross-connections or point-of-entry. He calls it the “Stone Soup” approach to interconnection.

“We think that economically it makes more sense as well in terms of redundancy,” Lunde says.

— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, Light Reading

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About NJFX:

Telecom Re-Imagined: Sparkle’s Innovative Subsea Solution w/ Support of NJFX

Newsroom / NJFX

Telecom Re-Imagined: Sparkle’s Innovative Subsea Solution w/ Support of NJFX

Ryan Imkemeier Explains the Importance of Equipment Maintenance, Vendor Relationships, Electrical Distribution & Managing the Team

May 7, 2018

Bandwidth demand is on the rise in the Latin American market as more people look to communicate both in the region, as well as connect to the rest of the world. LATAM is also leading the globe with over $1.5 billion of new subsea cable investment in 2017 and 2018. The population continues to benefit from access to fast broadband infrastructure. All of this activity makes for a lot of potential in the region for carriers, service providers, OTTs and enterprises to develop revenue growth and drive even more enhanced capabilities for the area. Sparkle is at the heart of this growth.

The company has invested in half of the Seabras-1 subsea cable – three out of the six dark fiber pairs – connecting New York to Brazil, and in doing so has developed a closed ring that has created diverse routes and secure, high capacity networks to meet this exponential bandwidth demand. What’s more, the routes bypass two huge, single points of failure: New York and Miami.

This application is supported of out of NJFX, the first and only colocation campus to sit at a cable landing station in the U.S and offer Tier 3, carrier neutral data center capabilities. According to Founder and CEO, Gil Santaliz, “Sparkle solved a problem that’s plagued the industry for more than 10 years. The company now offers a complete, diverse wet route all the way down to Miami. Now someone in Ashburn, VA can reach the Caribbean without going through Manhattan. The company has also found a way to get to the Caribbean and South America and bypass Miami and New York – completely avoiding two traditional pain points.”

Through Seabras-1 and the backhaul extensions from cable landing stations to main PoPs across North America and South America, Sparkle provides easy onward connectivity to the rest of world. The main advantages for Sparkle’s customers using its Seabras-1 fibers include lower latency on the US-Brazil route, which has been developed on a path completely off the hurricane risk area.

In addition to Seabras-1, Sparkle saw an opportunity to invest in a submarine cable to offer diverse routes via Florida and the Caribbean. Dark fiber on the cable was purchased and lit. “We needed a solution to connect this cable to Miami. We looked at many terrestrial solutions and nearly the whole environment options were not of high quality, so we decided on this underused submarine cable that runs from Tuckerton, NJ to Boca Raton, FL,” noted Federico Porri, CTO for Sparkle Americas. The result is a complete, diverse connection from New Jersey all the way to Sao Paolo with many secure, reliable route options and off-shoots along the way.

Solving Telecom Pain Point via Diverse, Wet Route

Sparkle studied the options carefully before determining subsea was the way to go. One thing the company noticed that new terrestrial fiber projects from Atlanta going south – for various reasons – were not being completed.

Sparkle works with backhaul providers at NJFX’s colocation campus, offering a unique architecture, low latency options and secure connectivity. Customers can bypass the congested NYC metro area via Sparkle’s capacity at the NJFX campus, which resides at the Cable Landing Station in Wall, New Jersey – offering a diverse route and alternatives for disaster recovery planning. Fully integrated with Sparkle’s global backbone, the new route enables customers major benefits from lower latency to added diversity.

LATAM’S New Superhighway

The solution has been extremely well accepted by the wholesale community. With Latin America’s position as a hotbed of expansion amid improving mobile network capabilities and Internet options, growth is inevitable in this sector. “It’s like when you build a new highway,” stated Porri, “the restaurant on the way from point A to point B will see business grow as well.”

The capacity on the system will far exceed anything from older subsea infrastructure, with up to 7 terabits of total capacity and 800Gig ready at RFS. Latency is about 10 milliseconds faster than standard terrestrial routes, making it attractive for enterprises, financial firms, OTTs and carriers.

“Innovative leaders in the industry are finding ways to create something important and reinvent the way we do things. It takes a lot of creativity and that is how we will make our technology work in the future,” concludes Santaliz.

*******

About Sparkle

Sparkle is TIM Group’s fully owned Global Operator and among top #10 international service providers worldwide, with a proprietary backbone of around 530,000 km of fiber spanning from Europe to Africa, the Americas and Asia. Leveraging its global IP, Data, Cloud, Data Center, Mobile Data and Voice Platforms, Sparkle offers a full range of ICT solutions to Internet Service Providers, OTTs, Media and Content Players, Application Service Providers, Fixed and Mobile operators as well as Multinational Enterprises. Its sales force is active worldwide and distributed over 36 countries.

Find out more about Sparkle at www.tisparkle.com

###

About NJFX:

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Telecom Re-Imagined: Sparkle’s Innovative Subsea Solution w/ Support of NJFX Read More »

Zayo & NJFX: The Fast Path to Global Financial Markets

Newsroom / NJFX

Zayo & NJFX: The Fast Path to Global Financial Markets

Zayo’s Low-Latency Connectivity Extends to Financial Liquidity Centers in Europe, South America and Asia

See the original article on Zayo’s official website here

July 22, 2022

Spread Networks by Zayo can now offer low-latency connectivity from the U.S. to key financial centers in Europe, South America and Asia. Zayo has established a point of presence in the NJFX Tier 3 data center in Wall Township, N.J., providing direct access to the subsea cable systems and local fiber providers that terminate in the data center.

The new and strengthened global capability further demonstrates our commitment to the Spread Networks by Zayo product, providing low-latency, global trading solutions for customers in the financial sector. Spread Network’s flagship route offers the lowest latency and direct high-count fiber route between New York and Chicago. When combined with Zayo’s existing fiber routes, for coast-to-coast, low-latency dark fiber and lit fiber-based solutions, financial firms, as well as content, media and cloud providers, benefit from the low-latency, coast-to-coast network.

Most providers offer only a single segment of the global low-latency footprint. With the NJFX relationship, Zayo has the ability to provide an end-to-end solution tying financial exchanges in South America and Europe all the way to Asia. The solution combines Spread’s low-latency, on-net and partner connectivity with Zayo’s existing fiber footprint in the NY financial corridor and west from Chicago to Tokyo.

“Our vision is to provide a ‘one stop shop’ for customers who want to trade globally, alleviating the need to work with different vendors in each region they are operating,” said Brandon Gouin, general manager of Spread Networks by Zayo. “The expanded global capability extends and strengthens our unique value proposition in the financial marketplace.”

Spread Networks by Zayo is evaluating other low-latency opportunities, both fiber and microwave, to provide customers with additional options for the fastest, most reliable routes available across established and emerging markets globally.

“Our vision is to provide a ‘one stop shop’ for customers who want to trade globally, alleviating the need to work with different vendors in each region they are operating. The expanded global capability extends and strengthens our unique value proposition in the financial marketplace.”

NJFX is the only Tier-3 Cable Landing Station colocation campus in the U.S., with access to low-latency connectivity to the U.S., South America, Europe and Asia via multiple subsea cable providers. NJFX connects to more than one million route miles, both subsea and terrestrial, and more than one million square feet of data center space across 200+ countries and territories.

For more information about Spread Networks by Zayo, visit our website, or meet us at The Trading Show in Chicago to learn how Zayo can power your global trading strategy.

###

About NJFX:

Latest News & Updates

Stay informed with the latest press releases, industry news, and more.

Industry Welcomes New Talent: Celebrating One Year Mark

April 6, 2023

Luminaries in Telecom “Dr. Jenifer Sunrise Winter”

March 29, 2023

NJFX Announces Second Floor MMR

March 23, 2023

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March 16, 2023

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March 9, 2023

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March 6, 2023

Explore More

Zayo & NJFX: The Fast Path to Global Financial Markets Read More »

Epsilon to Host Webinar on Serving Next-Gen Enterprise Cloud Demand

Newsroom / NJFX

Epsilon to Host Webinar on Serving Next-Gen Enterprise Cloud Demand

Leading network service provider and NJFX to discuss the growing forces that are creating a shift in networking service models, whilst illustrating the business case for SDN and API interoperability

See the original article here at Businesswire

April 17, 2018

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Epsilon^®, a privately owned global communications service provider, today announced that it will be hosting a webinar entitled “Serving Next-Gen Enterprise Cloud Demand with Software Defined Networking” on Tuesday, April 24, at 10am ET. This webinar is exclusive to the industry analyst community and will focus on the evolving needs of the data center as applications including artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT and more are driving the always-on, connected world that we live in. With the global transformations that these applications promise to deliver, the connectivity model must also adapt in order to not stifle innovation.

“At Epsilon, we are working to proactively meet our customers’ connectivity needs, in partnership with data centers like NJFX. This webinar will allow both Epsilon and NJFX to have an open dialogue with the analyst community about the best way to address these needs.”

Epsilon is a cloud-centric network service provider, extending carrier grade connectivity services to communications and cloud ecosystems. The company offers networking capabilities that combine on-demand infrastructure, automation, web-based portals and APIs designed to enable global connectivity.

Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from Epsilon co-founder and chief executive officer, Jerzy Szlosarek, on the growing forces that are cultivating the shift in networking service models, whilst illustrating the business case for Software Defined Networking (SDN) and API interoperability that will serve the evolved enterprise networking needs. Gil Santaliz, CEO of NJFX—operating the only U.S. Tier 3 data center located at a Cable Landing Station (CLS)—will also participate in the webinar discussing how the two operators are working together.

“Emerging technology is forcing enterprises to reevaluate how they manage, support and store these applications. As a result, the data center industry must evolve to not only meet its customer’s current application and connectivity needs, but also those needs that have yet to be realized as technology continues to advance,” said Jerzy Szlosarek, CEO, Epsilon. “At Epsilon, we are working to proactively meet our customers’ connectivity needs, in partnership with data centers like NJFX. This webinar will allow both Epsilon and NJFX to have an open dialogue with the analyst community about the best way to address these needs.”

The webinar will be held on Tuesday, April 24, at 10am ET, and is exclusive to the analyst community. Registration is now open and can be accessed here.

About Epsilon

Epsilon is a global Cloud Centric Network service provider, extending carrier grade connectivity services to the world’s Communications and Cloud ecosystems. The company offers smart networking capabilities that combine on demand infrastructure, automation, web-based portals and APIs to give partners friction-free access to global connectivity.

All Epsilon services are powered by a next generation hyper-scalable global backbone which connects all the leading telecoms hubs globally. Across this fabric encompasses a dense ecosystem of carriers, service operators and cloud providers offering the leading interconnect point for a diverse set of network and connectivity requirements. For more information, please visit www.epsilontel.com.