What is the role of Telxius in subsea today?
When it comes to enabling opportunities for businesses and people all over the world, communication has a key role. We enable communication by helping our customers and partners to get their data to the users or final points of consumption in as fast and reliable a way as can be made available. The expertise and “savoir faire” of Telxius as a communication infrastructure company means that we can play into successfully enabling diverse subsea routes and then interconnect them with the main data hubs in the world, from where information can reach virtually anywhere. On top of it, we feature a Tier 1 IP global network, as well as capacity, colocation and security services. Finally, we are proud partners of the main carriers, cloud and content companies and fiber players in the world. Together, we can definitely make it happen.
What are your customers looking for, relative to traffic distribution at the end points of the Telxius network? How important was it to land cables in the Mid-Atlantic (which had never been done before) and what impacted your decision most to make this enormous investment?
Interconnection has become pervasive. But only superior latency and capacity features, such as MAREA’s or BRUSA’s, can unleash the business possibilities of this interconnected world. MAREA and BRUSA cables terminate in the U.S. in the Virginia Beach Cable Landing Station. From there, the cables connect from international destinations such as Bilbao in the north of Spain and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. We have done this by enabling rich interconnection capabilities through purpose-built, next-generation, highly specialized communications infrastructure. By design, we are open to cooperate with any terrestrial fiber, connectivity, digital media, cloud and/or content provider to enjoy the best IP, capacity, colocation and security services.
This links directly with our decision to land MAREA in Virginia Beach, much farther south than other transatlantic cables in the Northern Hemisphere, therefore enabling a diverse route through the Atlantic. Besides that, the Commonwealth of Virginia hosts some of the main data centers in the world, which plays into the interconnection element of our strategy. On the European side, Bilbao is a main connectivity point reaching into Paris and Marseille. From there, Africa, Middle East and Asia are close destinations.
MAREA and BRUSA are the newest and highest-capacity subsea cables in their respective routes. What are the technological advances in these cables, compared to some of the other cables that Telxius either has ownership in or has capacity in such as SAM-1, Columbus-III, PCCS, SAT-3 or ATLANTIS-2?
MAREA and BRUSA are unique for their high capacity, low latency and specific design features. Regarding MAREA, up to 24 Tbps per fiber pair is currently the highest capacity available, which makes up for over 200 Tbps for MAREA. MAREA offers a diverse landing point in Virginia from existing transatlantic cables. On the other end, it reaches northern Spain instead of UK or Ireland and therefore avoids a densely subsea populated area. BRUSA features a unique design including a 4-fiber pair express route between the U.S. and Brazil, again a very high capacity per fiber pair and a new landing point in the U.S. for an American cable, the third one connecting Puerto Rico to the mainland U.S. Ongoing innovations will be incorporated into the cables so as to improve them all through their lifespan.
To summarize, the main technological advances of MAREA and BRUSA are ultra-high capacity, low latencies, strategic locations, connectivity to key landing points, with direct access to digital hubs. They represent a new generation in subsea cables altogether.
How are you planning to capitalize and benefit from the NAP, especially when it comes to the enterprise businesses in the Greater Richmond and surrounding areas?
While Richmond continues to expand, attracting more and more international organizations and talent, the presence of Telxius enables unmatched speed and savings for enterprises and hyperscalers with international connectivity requirements. Our presence at the NAP provides us with a unique position as key players in the convergence of terrestrial fiber, subsea fiber, data centers and cloud computing. The expertise of QTS as a leading provider of hybrid colocation and mega-scale data center solutions will allow us to leverage our IP, capacity, colocation and security services. Finally, the fact that the Richmond data center is located so close to MAREA and BRUSA landing stations, represents an important asset to our business and customers.