Construction begins on PEACE cable

Huawei Marine Networks and the 12,000 kilometer PEACE Cable system have hit a new milestone. The project has now entered into the cable and material manufacturing stage, staying on schedule for an RFS date in the first quarter of 2020.

PEACE stands for Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe, which tells you pretty succinctly the route they will be taking. With one end in Pakistan and the other in southern France, it will come ashore in Djibouti and Egypt along the way with an extension south to Somalia, Kenya, and the Sechelles.

Further plans suggest extending that branch further down to South Africa.  The landing parties on either end will be Pakistan’s Cybernet and Djibouti Telecom, and the agreements for destinations in between are expected to follow in the next few weeks.

The build promises the lowest latency route between Europe and China, although the materials I have don’t say exactly how they plan to do that – a terrestrial leg through Pakistan and western China perhaps?

When complete, the PEACE cable promises 16Tbps per fiber pair. An earlier announcement suggested 5 fiber pairs for a total of 60Tbps, though I don’t know if plans have evolved since then.