Why is subsea spectrum sharing an increasingly hot topic in the industry? Is it time for your business to look at it and what do you need to know? Stacie Pascale, VP of product at Aqua Comms, advises on weighing up the options.
In satiating the infinitely uphill trend in global capacity requirements, bottlenecks will continue to exist in markets where costs, physical limitations and geopolitical obstacles are the greatest. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is in the subsea market, where customers increasingly seek better solutions to meet their operating needs in a way that minimises capital spending.
When ‘Nx400G’ wavelengths are no longer enough, how can operators get the scalability and flexibility they require continent-to-continent? When carriers with enough throughput to consider full fibre pairs must be frugal with capital expenditure, how can they still fulfil their large bandwidth needs?
Operators are beginning to find that spectrum sharing is the optimal bridge. Nestled between dark fibre and wavelengths in the product stack, spectrum sharing enables fibre owners to fraction off a portion of their spectrum so a customer can have all the control and flexibility of fibre ownership without paying the full price, and – often more importantly – without having to learn how to operate, procure and manage subsea fibre.
The challenges
So why doesn’t everyone buy and sell spectrum? The complexities associated with selling spectrum responsibly cannot be understated. Not all spectrum is of equal value – with some frequency ranges supporting materially more capacity than others – and it requires a very experienced operating team to manage and optimise.
Spectrum sharing also comes with security risk if provisioning is mishandled, privacy risk if access is mismanaged, and can expose the entire fibre pair to an outage in the event of a power-monitoring error. A small surge or drop in power by even one user can take down traffic across the entire fibre.
Many operators fail to appropriately recognise and protect against these inherent risks – particularly in the submarine cable space – leading to costly outages and irreparable reputational damage.
Responsible solutions
When deciding which service provider to pick, think about what contractual measures are in place that command true partnership behaviour by creating shared liability of overall system health. Ask yourself, if another operator bought spectrum right next to my frequency band, does this contract create enough protection for the entire system, such that I wouldn’t have to worry about my new neighbour’s control of their fraction?
Key operational factors to consider when looking at spectrum providers include the level of dedicated engineering expertise, whether fibre is characterised, what frequency ranges are recommended, and the quality of capacity-optimisation consultancy. Ensure that your operator leverages world-class equipment precautions, including tailored NOC capabilities and best-in-class spectrum management equipment for automatic fault management and spectrum privacy safeguards.
For some customers, shared spectrum solutions carry too much operating uncertainty. For these networks, a managed-spectrum solution might be a better fit than unmanaged spectrum.
Managed spectrum offers all the scalability and flexibility of unmanaged spectrum, but removes the liability and operating risk. In this model, the spectrum is managed for the buyer using the modem technology selected (or even owned) by the end customer – ensuring optimal capacity throughput at all times and looking after the network health as if it were the provider’s own. It is designed for the customer that wants the best of both worlds.
As spectrum continues to rise in popularity on the back of definitive supply and demand trends in the subsea market, buyers must be vigilant about ensuring they are purchasing spectrum from a carrier that has truly productised and protected their offering.
Here are three questions to ask your supplier to gauge their experience in spectrum sharing:
1. How do you ensure power balance across shared spectrum?
2. How do you manage spectral frequency variance in your partitioning and pricing?
3. Here are my network goals: is managed or pure spectrum right for me?
Or why not ask Aqua Comms these questions to learn what a good answer looks like?
