In 2019, my colleague Alan Mauldin and I busted the myth that the submarine cable industry’s current practices would sustain our future capacity requirements.
Four years later, we revisited the same question during our telecom mythbusting session at SubOptic 2023.
Was the verdict the same?
This was our first time reevaluating a myth, and two big things have changed since our initial consensus.
In 2019, we were seeing very fast growth across the Atlantic. That’s changed a little bit—not a lot, but just enough to make a difference.
Secondly, SDM R&D was not as advanced in 2019 as it is today. Our current outlook for industry supply capabilities is a little rosier nowadays.
Watch the video below to see how these developments affected our myth retest.
The Conclusion
Will the industry’s current practices be enough to accommodate future capacity requirements?
It's difficult to say, because it depends on exponential growth and what happens with SDM. For now, though, we can change our verdict from busted to plausible.
Alan Mauldin and I tackled this myth and five others during our presentation at SubOptic 2023. Download our slides for the full breakdown.
Tim Stronge
Tim Stronge is VP of Research at TeleGeography. His responsibilities span across many of our research practices including network infrastructure, bandwidth demand modeling, cross-border traffic flows, and telecom services pricing.