Singapore to Colombia: 548ms Across Three Continents — Why TELXIUS Sends Your Packets Through Paris and Virginia to Reach South America

The Traceroute

On March 27, 2026, a RIPE Atlas probe in Singapore ran a traceroute to Quibdó, Colombia — a city in the Chocó department on the Pacific coast of South America. The shortest path across the Pacific Ocean would be roughly 17,000 km.

Here is the actual route the packet took:

Singapore → Paris, France → Ashburn, USA → Madrid, Spain → Medellín, Colombia → Quibdó, Colombia

Five countries. Three continents. 548 milliseconds.

The packet started in Singapore, crossed the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean to reach Paris — roughly 10,500 km. In Paris, Level 3 handed it to TELXIUS, Telefónica's wholesale cable arm. TELXIUS then sent it across the Atlantic to Ashburn, Virginia — another 6,200 km. From Ashburn, the packet went back across the Atlantic to Madrid — 5,800 km in the wrong direction. And only then, from Madrid, did TELXIUS route it to Medellín via the SAm-1 or BRUSA cable.

Total estimated distance: over 40,000 km. Direct distance Singapore to Quibdó: approximately 17,000 km.

Ratio: 2.4:1. The packet traveled nearly two and a half times the direct distance.

Why Paris? Why Ashburn? Why Madrid?

The route looks absurd on a map, but it follows a simple logic: there is no submarine cable connecting Asia to South America directly.

Singapore is one of the most connected cities on Earth — a hub for nearly 40 submarine cables linking Asia to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and North America. Colombia has multiple cable landings connecting it to the US, the Caribbean, and the rest of Latin America. But between Southeast Asia and South America? Nothing.

The packet's path traces the actual cable infrastructure:

Singapore → Paris: This leg follows one of the SEA-ME-WE cables or the Arelion (formerly Telia) backbone through the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and into Marseille, then Paris. It is one of the busiest submarine cable routes in the world, carrying traffic between Asia and Europe.

Paris → Ashburn: TELXIUS operates the Marea cable (jointly with Microsoft and Meta) — a 6,600 km, 200+ Tbps cable between Bilbao, Spain and Virginia Beach, USA. It also operates the Dunant cable (with Google) on a similar route. The handoff from Level 3 to TELXIUS in Paris sends the packet toward TELXIUS's transatlantic infrastructure.

Ashburn → Madrid: This is the surprise. Instead of routing south from Ashburn to Colombia via the CFX-1 or ARCOS cables that connect Florida to Cartagena, TELXIUS sent the packet back across the Atlantic to Madrid. This likely reflects TELXIUS's internal network topology — its backbone runs through Madrid, and its Latin American cables originate from the Iberian Peninsula.

Madrid → Medellín: From Madrid, TELXIUS uses SAm-1 — a 25,000 km cable ring surrounding South America with landing points in Colombia, among 10 other countries — or the BRUSA cable connecting Spain to the US and Brazil.

The Missing Link: Asia to South America

The reason this route exists is a gap in the global submarine cable map. Asia and South America are the two most poorly connected major regions on Earth.

Consider the alternatives:

• Asia to Europe: dozens of cables via the Indian Ocean (SEA-ME-WE series, AAE-1, PEACE, etc.)
• Asia to North America: multiple trans-Pacific cables (Echo, Bifrost, SJC, FASTER, etc.)
• Europe to South America: several cables (EllaLink, SAm-1, Atlantis-2, etc.)
• Asia to South America directly: essentially zero operational cables

The Humboldt cable — a Google-backed project connecting Sydney to Valparaíso, Chile, with a branch to French Polynesia — is under construction with a roughly $400 million budget. It will be the first cable to meaningfully bridge the Asia-Pacific and South American regions. But even when completed, it will connect Australia and Chile, not Southeast Asia and Colombia.

For traffic between Singapore and Colombia, the only options today are:
1. Go west through Europe and across the Atlantic (what this traceroute shows)
2. Go east across the Pacific to the US West Coast, then south

Both involve crossing at least two oceans and three continents.

TELXIUS: The Carrier Behind the Route

TELXIUS is Telefónica's cable infrastructure subsidiary, operating over 100,000 km of terrestrial and submarine fiber. Its submarine portfolio includes seven next-generation cable systems: Marea, BRUSA, Dunant, Tannat, Junior, Mistral, and the upcoming Tikal.

The company's network is designed around two hubs: Madrid and the US East Coast (primarily Ashburn/Virginia Beach). This hub-and-spoke architecture explains the Ashburn → Madrid backtrack. For TELXIUS, routing through Madrid to reach Latin America is not a detour — it is the designed path, because its Latin American cables (SAm-1, Mistral, Tannat) originate from Spain or connect through Spanish nodes.

The handoff chain in our traceroute tells the story:

• SPTEL (Singapore local ISP) → Level 3/Lumen (global Tier-1 carrier) → TELXIUS (Telefónica's cable arm) → Colombia Telecomunicaciones (Telefónica's Colombian subsidiary, operating as Movistar)

This is a Telefónica-family route from end to end, once the packet leaves Singapore. The packet doesn't take the shortest geographic path — it takes the shortest business path through Telefónica's infrastructure.

548ms and the Speed of Light

At 548 ms round-trip, this route is slow but not inexplicable. Light in fiber travels at roughly 200,000 km/s. At 40,000+ km of cable, the propagation delay alone would be approximately 200 ms one way, or 400 ms round-trip. Add processing delays at each hop, queuing, and protocol overhead, and 548 ms is actually close to the physical minimum for a path this long.

The problem isn't the speed of the cable — it's the length of the route. A direct trans-Pacific path from Singapore to Colombia's Pacific coast would be roughly 17,000 km — under 100 ms one way. But that cable does not exist.

Until it does, packets between Southeast Asia and South America will continue their three-continent tour. Singapore to Paris. Paris to Ashburn. Ashburn to Madrid. Madrid to Medellín. And finally — 548 milliseconds later — to Quibdó, a city on the Pacific coast that sits closer to Singapore than to any of the cities its data actually visited.