Nuvem, a subsea cable to connect Portugal, Bermuda, and the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

Nuvem, a subsea cable to connect Portugal, Bermuda, and the U.S.

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124 pointsingve34 comments

While not a continental hub like the Netherlands, Portugal has excellent consumer Internet access: 700 Mbit 5G, 300 Mbit wifi in basically every cafe, apartment, and hotel.

You step off the plane and can expect an absolutely rock solid Internet connection. Excellent news since you will probably need it to file some complaint with TAP Portugal which is in turn terrible.

I wonder if it was easier to work with Portugal because they own the Azores, a collection of islands pretty far out in the Atlantic and a convenient stopover before hitting the main continent.

It is a bummer, yes, we have fiber across all Azores' islands but latency to the US is high because we have to go through mainland Europe.

Curious, I'm someone mentioned me the Azores having direct connection to North America. And maybe it does but not for consumer connection.

We have fiber connecting all islands and one subsea cable connected to Portugal mainland. Maybe the US military have a hidden one connected to North America, but I doubt.

If you give me a domain/IP that is in NA I will ping/trace it and post here the results if you like.

Azores is quite a bit south of this cable from what is shown in the picture.

Doing a map of a flight from Sines, to Bermuda, to Charleston airports:

* http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=LPSI-TXKF-KCHS

The (great circle) route is straight through the Azores.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_navigation

Whomever made the map for the diagram just drew a straight line from Portugal to Bermuda, which works for a flat surface, but in the real world the world is round, so the shortest distance is often curved (as it appears on a 2D projection).

However this site shows the cable travelling south of the Azores:

* https://www.fiberatlantic.com/system/n5OE4

Not really south, it's just a bit north: Ponta Delgada - Latitude: 37.7333 Longitude: -25.6667. Lisbon - Latitude 38.71667 Longitude -9.13333. It is the exclusive economic zones of Portugal that are in the path of the cable: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone_of_P...

The article doesn't mention anything about the Azores or Madeira.

I also would have expected the Azores to be involved. Mainland Portugal to Massachusetts via Azores seems like it'd be a shorter shot than Mainland Portugal to Bermuda to NC. Especially given how much further west NC is vs MA

Is there any resource to read about the economics of subsea cables? I bet it costs a huge amount of money and time to set it up, and a lot to maintain it. Curious what are the actual numbers. And does it pay off?

Focuses more on the historical side of undersea cables, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to recommend Arthur C Clarke’s “How the World was One” which is an incredible book on the history of telecommunications infrastructure, including the history and economics of undersea cables.

I was interested to see how expensive a subsea cable was, but most of the projects are private and not disclosed and the internet is full of varying estimates. A comparable cable - MAREA (Spain to US) cost about $165M-$400M for over 4000 miles of 200 terabits per second, Now used by AWS, Facebook, and Microsoft.

That's about $185-400 per GBit (I think).

https://dgtlinfra.com/telxius-joins-trans-atlantic-dunant-ma...

https://copenhageneconomics.com/publication/the-economic-imp...

Study that was linked in TFA which lists the benefits of adding another subsea cable.

Interesting paper, but it only talks about the benefits of cables, not the cost of operating (which was the question above).

Nice development.

As a side note, as a Portuguese person I think they could have found an easier word for non-portuguese speakers. Not sure if the english speakers around the world will be able to say the nasal "em" correctly or with ease.

> Not sure if the english speakers around the world will be able to say the nasal "em" correctly

Probably they won't, but then so what? The consequences of miss pronouncing the name of a subsea cable seem quite mild to me. It is not like you have to pronounce it quick over the radio with no ambiguity allowed to save life or limb. :)

Is Google getting some sort of kickback from the Portuguese gov?

The cable has 3 emerged locations (NC USA, Bermuda, Portugal) but the whole press release reads like a foreign investor ad for Portugal?

Probably because despite East Coast - Portugal being the shortest Atlantic route, all existing cables so far seem to land in Spain, France, UK, Ireland and others in the north? https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

Always happy to see more internet infrastructure coming online. Has anyone built a fun interactive map of all the subsea cables?

(disclosure: googler)

https://www.submarinecablemap.com

https://submarine-cable-map-2022.telegeography.com

https://www.fiberatlantic.com

https://www.infrapedia.com (now requires LinkedIn login)

also partially on https://openinframap.org/

The Google ones are here: https://cloud.google.com/about/locations#network

itt: googler, not able or willing to use google search, asks other internet users for curated information

Why did you add this disclosure?

obligatory Neal Stephenson Mother Earth Mother Board link:

https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

This was the longest article ever published in Wired afaik.

One of my daydreams is to replicate his travels and check how things are in 2023 compared to 1996. Alas, I don't have Stephenson's literary skills.

And easily the best.

> With around 95% of the world’s communications being carried on submarine cable networks

Surely a lot of communications are within a continent, not needing deep sea cables?

> Surely a lot of communications are within a continent, not needing deep sea cables?

Why? Lots of packets flowing in all types of directions, even if I'm just writing to my neighbor on Whatsapp. I'd be surprised if even 10% of my packets never left the (European) continent. Maybe it'd look differently if I lived in North America.

I would guess that some intra continental communications still use sub-sea cables, either through necessity (UK to France) or to cut out a large number of hops (say South Africa to the Ivory Coast; I don't know if such a cable exists, but I think there are cables going alongside west Africa).

95% of the world.

Will this cable go through the Bermuda Triangle?

Assuming it actually "exists" or is anything but a urban legend, the area is supposed to be between Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda, so area starts below Bermuda. The map doesn't show the cable location in detail, but if they pull the cable through or above Bermuda, it seems to narrowingly avoid the area.

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