In May, U.S. cable giants Charter Communications and Cox Communications entered into a definitive agreement to combine their businesses in a “transformative transaction” that will create an industry leader in the U.S. cable sector.
Jun 23, 2025
Find the Right SD-WAN Vendor With Our Free 2025 Guide
It’s been almost a decade since SD-WAN burst onto the scene, and the service is undeniably a critical component of today’s enterprise WAN.
The core benefits associated with SD-WAN technology are consistent across all provider offerings—reduced cost and network complexity, ease of upgrades and policy changes, increased flexibility and network performance, and increased visibility into application performance.
But a dizzying array of SD-WAN service options still remain in the market.
Providers continue to add new service and security features to distinguish themselves in a crowded marketplace. And this multitude of different service options are reflected in the range of reported prices in the market.
Luckily, there is a light at the end of the tunnel: TeleGeography’s 2025 SD-WAN Vendor Guide.
Jun 11, 2025
2G and 3G: Closing Time for Legacy Networks
It’s been a couple of years since we reviewed the state of the 2G and 3G mobile markets to see how network closures were coming along.
There has been plenty of activity since then, and 2025 is shaping up to be a busy year for shutdowns.
In this episode of the TeleGeography Explains the Internet podcast, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington joins the show for a deep dive into the evolving world of spectrum allocation, broadband infrastructure, submarine cable policy, and cybersecurity. With a unique background in finance, law, and policy, Simington offers an interesting perspective on the complexities of the current telecom environment and where federal policy is headed.
“Everyone’s getting rid of it.”
That’s how one carrier I spoke with described aging technologies like SONET/SDH and TDM.
Another used the term “accelerated outphasing,” while a third opted for a simple “RIP.”
Can you stop a cable break before it happens? We know how and why cable faults occur, but could damage be mitigated beforehand?
May 27, 2025
The Key Trends Shaping Long-Haul Capacity Demand
What's shaping the trajectory of the global bandwidth market? To answer that question, we identified four significant trends worth watching within our recently updated Transport Networks Research Service.
To understand the future of long-haul capacity demand and pricing, bookmark these industry headlines.
May 23, 2025
How Data Gravity is Shaping Top Connectivity Markets
Which cities are the most connected, and which ones are the fastest growing for internet infrastructure? Every quarter, we assess the top 10 cities with our Market Connectivity Score—an interactive tool in our Data Center Research Service that tracks 45 different data points for every city: data center power, number of ASNs peering locally, cloud onramps, and more.
May 20, 2025
Customers Are Consuming More Bandwidth Than Ever: What That Means for Wholesale Pricing
New data from TeleGeography’s Transport Networks Research Service tells a story about changing bandwidth pricing trends, the factors that drive them, and what we might expect to see in the market.
Here's what we know about wholesale pricing in 2025.
A steady stream of investment has driven tremendous growth in subsea cable infrastructure to keep pace with ever-increasing bandwidth demand.
According to new data from TeleGeography’s Transport Networks Research Service, the aggregate cost of new construction over the past nine years has averaged over $2 billion annually.
Let's review the state of submarine cable investment in 2025.
May 12, 2025
International Bandwidth Demand Surpasses 6.4 Pbps
According to new data from TeleGeography’s Transport Networks Research Service, global bandwidth demand continues to climb.
But, as has been the story for the last several years, this growth is coming at a slower and slower rate. Here's what this says about long-haul networks in 2025.
There's been lots of conversation about the recent boom in submarine cable construction. This flurry of activity becomes clearer when our annual map is viewed over time.
We're sure many of our readers are gearing up for Capacity Eurasia 2025. Let us help you prepare for the main event in Istanbul. Here's what to know, when to register, and what topics to brush up on in advance.
Industry conferences are like orchestras: they bring together many sounds which may be hard for the untrained ear to differentiate.
We at TeleGeography are well-equipped to listen to the many melodies sung at telecom industry gatherings. Most recently, I joined colleagues in São Paulo to discuss regional trends at the Capacity LATAM event.
Today on TeleGeography Explains the Internet, we welcome Michael Martin, formerly a global network and security architect at McKinsey.
Michael has extensive experience and knowledge in the enterprise network space. I wanted to get his take on the industry's state of implementation of network automation among enterprises.
Carl Roberts is feeling energized.
The senior ICT executive and advisor to a myriad of C-suite teams—who is also the newest addition to TeleGeography's roster of Preferred Partners—recently chatted with the TeleGeography team about his time in the industry and the constant changes that have been an energizing force in his career.
Apr 10, 2025
Mobile Market Overview: Still Buoyant Into 2025
At the end of 2024, the global mobile subscription total stood at 8.8 billion, according to figures from our GlobalComms Database. This is up from 8.7 billion a year earlier and 8.5 billion at end-2022.
Ten years ago, the total was closer to 7.0 billion; at the end of 2004, it was just 1.7 billion.
Apr 7, 2025
Two Decades of Datacloud Global Congress
Datacloud Global Congress returns June 3-5, 2025, in Cannes.
And we have a birthday to celebrate. The event is recognizing 20 years as the premier global event for data center, cloud, AI, and investment leaders.
My family has probably watched Lord of the Rings a dozen times or more1. We can (and sometimes will) quote entire passages from the films.
It's true. The localization of content, applications, and compute in local hubs like São Paulo, paired with submarine cable delays, network buildout logistics, and the simple fact that bandwidth demand can't keep doubling, has slowed bandwidth demand in Latin America.
Content delivery networks (CDNs) are a geographically distributed network of servers (caches) that work together to deliver content by moving it closer to the end-users.
Back in early 2019, after months of speculation linking Telefonica to a sale of its Central American operations, the Spanish telecom giant agreed to offload all five of its units in the region.
By the end of 2019, the Madrid-based group had unveiled a five-point turnaround strategy to overhaul its business.
Mar 24, 2025
The Lay of the Land (of Local Zones)
In early 2022, AWS announced a new element to its cloud network infrastructure: the local zone.
With increased focus on moving cloud services closer to end-users, the local zone provides low-latency access to applications running closer to customers.
Google offers a similar service with its dedicated interconnect service, an option to connect to a low-latency colocation facility that provides latencies of less than 5 milliseconds between the workloads in a specified region and the on-ramp location.
OVH launched the same local zone service in the first quarter of 2024, and Microsoft joined in as well with their extended zone service launched in the summer of 2024.
Here's how these services differ—and how many have launched.
We're pumped to have Dennis Thankachan, Co-Founder and CEO of Lightyear, back on TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
Last time Dennis joined us on the show, we dug into Lightyear's approach to creating a digital telecom lifecycle automation platform for enterprise networks.
This time, we discuss their State of Connectivity Report, which dovetails nicely with many of the issues we research here at TeleGeography. (Perhaps this read is a perfect companion to our State of the Network? A match made in heaven, etc.)
When discussing submarine cable bandwidth, it’s crucial to distinguish between lit capacity and potential capacity.
These terms are not interchangeable, and the difference between them explains a key aspect of the submarine cable market.
Mar 13, 2025
A Significant Slowdown in Cloud Region Deployment
In 2024, 13 new cloud regions were launched globally. This marks a significant slowdown in the deployment of new cloud regions.
There hasn't been a year with fewer than 20 new regions since 2017. As you may recall, 26 regions launched in 2023, 24 in 2022, 27 in 2021, and 25 in 2020. At the peak in 2019, 41 regions came online.
Mar 12, 2025
Data Centers 101: Technical Terms You Should Know
From cross connects to PUE, the data center industry is packed with technical jargon.
Today, we’re breaking down 13 key colocation terms. Whether you're new to the field or just need a refresher, this simple glossary can help.
Mar 6, 2025
The Rise of Fiber
Fiber broadband is now by far the most common means of fixed broadband connectivity worldwide, although the picture varies from region to region.
Mar 4, 2025
It’s Time To Learn About Latency
Latency is a term that’s frequently cited when discussing long-haul networks. But what is it really?
Feb 27, 2025
How Many Submarine Cables Are There, Anyway?
Subsea cables power the internet under oceans all over the world. But how many cables are there?
Feb 26, 2025
Mother Earth, Motherboard
A few weeks ago, I returned to sunny Honolulu for TeleGeography’s annual telecom trends workshop at PTC.
As usual, Brianna Boudreau explored global pricing trends, and Jon Hjembo shared insights from the data center world.
A bit unusual was the name of my segment: Mother Earth, Motherboard. This title was actually inspired by an article written in 1996:
Feb 19, 2025
Evaluating Interconnection Market Health
What makes a city a hub? And what makes a hub healthy?
Before we answer these questions, we must acknowledge that the interconnection market is not a homogeneous thing. It's an ecosystem comprised of numerous critically interdependent parts, much like a body or a machine.
Hello, gentle readers, and welcome to the 2025 State of the Network Report—our eighth edition.
The TeleGeography team spent the last year compiling market surveys, building algorithms, and analyzing emerging trends, and now we're ready to share the highlights.
In 2024, we saw many telecom headlines in the mainstream media. There were stories on the evening news about submarine cables relating to geopolitics, network outages, and even the potential impact of AI.
At this year’s Pacific Telecommunications Council conference, I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at how those headlines actually impacted the market in terms of pricing.
Broadly speaking, telecom service providers have two ways of connecting traffic to a destination telco.
They can either connect directly with the destination carrier or route traffic to a wholesale carrier that connects to a destination telco.
Although many retail service providers, such as mobile operators, MVNOs, and cable broadband providers, rely heavily on wholesale carriers to transport and terminate their customers’ international calls, wholesale revenues are down 11% from ten years ago.
Let’s take a moment to dive in a bit and see what's going on.
Feb 10, 2025
Data Assurance in the Age of AI
What do you envision when you think of data in motion? It's a beautiful, abstract idea.
Vinay Prabhu, Director of Product Management at Graphiant is our latest guest on TeleGeography Explains the Internet. He recently joined us to discuss the intricacies of moving data around the globe.
Feb 6, 2025
The Podcast Goes Dark! (Dark Fiber, That is)
We haven't been getting enough fiber here at TeleGeography Explains the Internet, but we're about to change that.
Nutritional jokes aside, this week, we welcome Todd Chapman, a veteran in fiber development, to the hot seat. Todd walks us through the ins and outs of Layer 0 of the physical infrastructure underlying data transmission. Some classic explaining of the internet.
In this episode, you'll get a walkthrough of the process that takes a fiber project from manufacturing to lit service—get ready to learn a thing or two about different types of fiber and their uses. We also get some good explanations of the dark fiber market and an overview of when enterprises might be interested in leasing dark fiber instead of lit service.
Here's a glimpse at what we discussed. Scroll to the bottom to listen to the whole discussion in its fiber-rich glory.
Digital Infrastructure Industry Expert Maya Glick has two decades in the digital infrastructure and telecommunications game.
Make some space on your wall.
The 2025 Africa Telecommunications Map is out—and it pairs perfectly with this year’s Submarine Cable Map.
Lately, I've been thinking about the movie director Alfred Hitchcock. One of his first big hits was a 1936 film called Sabotage.
If you’ve checked out our International Voice Report, you probably noticed that the data carefully distinguishes between retail and wholesale traffic, as well as between wholesale and direct traffic.
What's the difference?
Jan 29, 2025
Peering Into the European Bandwidth Market
The European telecommunications market has been a global trailblazer in terms of innovation, affordability of service, and infrastructure deployment. Few markets in the world have seen comparable levels of investment and competition.
Europe also crucially interconnects regions, providing key hubs for traffic exchange and access to content for Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
The 2024 Capacity Europe conference in London highlighted the industry's progress and the challenges that lie ahead in the near and medium term. TeleGeography was there, not only with submarine cable maps in hand but also moderating panels on subsea cable route diversity and discussing current market trends with the industry’s leading experts.
So what did we learn?
Jan 22, 2025
The Impact of AI on Submarine Cable Networks
Submarine networks enable uninterrupted connectivity among geographically dispersed physical data centers, effectively forming a global data center without walls.
Substantial investments driving the swift growth of AI infrastructure in both existing and new data centers are set to significantly influence data center interconnect (DCI) networks, which are essential for the success of AI applications and use cases.
Research Director Alan Mauldin recently joined Ciena’s Brian Lavallée for a live webinar exploring these technical and strategic drivers transforming the AI landscape.
Welcome back, TeleGeography Explains the Internet listeners. We took a nice long break for the holidays, and we've returned refreshed with another batch of telecom conversations for your feed.
Our first guest of 2025 is Fahim Sabir, Director of Digital Solutions at Colt.
Happy New Year? Now it is, because we just dropped our 2025 Submarine Cable Map.
Sponsored by Telecom Egypt, this futuristic, high-contrast design depicts 597 cable systems and 1,712 landings that are currently active or under construction.
Jan 15, 2025
5G Comes to Vietnam
Vietnamese military-run telecom operator Viettel reports impressive uptake figures since launching its 5G mobile network in mid-October 2024. Within two weeks, the firm attracted 3 million 5G users, reaching 4 million in late December.
While 5G has been available in many Asian markets for some time, users in Vietnam were forced to wait for their first taste of the new technology.
Jan 10, 2025
The Subsea Cables Connecting LATAM and Beyond
Ah, São Paulo. A critical market for Latin American connectivity (just ask our Market Connectivity Score), and the perfect location for Capacity LATAM 2025.
Jan 9, 2025
A Bit Over-The-Top: What Is OTT Traffic?
The international voice market's trajectory is an inexorable downward spiral, and “over-the-top” (OTT) communications services are most certainly the main culprit.
In November, we unveiled our new Market Connectivity Score (MCS) and dropped our first public rankings of the top ten most connected and fastest-growing cities in the world.
Because we update the MCS quarterly, it's time to see how those rankings have changed.
Dec 20, 2024
2024: A Telecom Year in Review
Happy holidays, TeleGeography Explains the Internet listeners.
We hope you're savoring the brief week between Christmas and New Year's when the world takes a moment to pause and reflect. School is out, schedules are topsy-turvy, and cookies are acceptable for breakfast. Perhaps like some of us, you've lost track of movies watched and presents wrapped.
If you're looking to take a break between the winter gatherings, grab some headphones. We've got you covered for an hour or so.
With February right around the corner, many of us are gearing up to celebrate 20 years of Capacity Middle East.
The 2025 conference—held February 4-6 in Dubai—will tackle big topics like how the Middle East is preparing for AI, and how the industry recovered from February’s Red Sea cable cuts.
TeleGeography’s Paul Brodsky will lead a panel focused on the latter, looking back at the immediate implications of the cuts, and how different parties rerouted.
Dec 16, 2024
When Networking and Security Collide
There's a common theme we encounter here at TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
The enterprise WAN has undergone significant changes in the past several years to align the network with digital transformation, cloud adoption, rising bandwidths, and cost control. While these changes make the network more resilient and affordable, they can also introduce new challenges in complexity and management.
Last month, I had the pleasure of speaking at Cairo ICT about colocation and connectivity trends.
I covered global bandwidth first, followed by a rundown on bandwidth in the Middle East and Africa.
Next up, data centers and interconnection hubs, with a discussion on where the hubs are, what makes a hub, and how hubs grow. Finally, I talked about end-user demand, which is very important with the growth of internet and demand.
You can catch a video of this presentation and download my slides below.
For TeleGeography Explains the Internet to truly explain the internet, sometimes we have to get into where your internet comes from. Internet sourcing for those in the know.
Nov 27, 2024
Three Interconnection Hubs To Keep an Eye On
ICYMI: we recently launched a dynamic new tool called the Market Connectivity Score (MCS).
The MCS is our answer to the question “Where is the next big hub going to be?” and pulls from our wide array of research areas to evaluate the health of more than 3,000 metropolitan markets worldwide.
Today, let's take a brief look at three of the markets highlighted in the MCS: Frankfurt, Singapore, and São Paulo.
Nov 21, 2024
What To Know About Submarine Cable Breaks
Earlier this week, operators of two communications cables—C-Lion 1 and BCS East-West Interlink—reported faults in the Baltic Sea.
Local internet service seems largely unaffected, but a swirl of sabotage allegations have emerged in the global press.
Without making a ruling on any ongoing investigations, let’s look at the facts.
Where are we building data centers? Why? What markets are primed for interconnectivity glory? Which ones are getting left in the dust?
Our Data Center Research Service estimates that there are 24 metropolitan markets that have more than 1 million square feet of operational data center capacity and four-year CAGR of at least 10%.
Nine of those 24 markets are in Asia and seven are in Europe. Even more extraordinary—four of the Asian markets are in India alone.
Nov 15, 2024
Who Orchestrates the Orchestrators?
Last week on the pod, we shared what network managers need to know about AI and machine learning. This week, we're back on the AI beat, specifically looking at how it can support corporate network automation.
Per usual, we had a little help. Our guest today is Jamie Pugh, CTO at Globalgig.
Jamie joined the show not only to ponder all things automation but also to discuss enterprise network orchestration in the era of an increasingly complex WAN.
Nov 13, 2024
Data Centers: That’s a Lot of Power!
The data center market is in the midst of an unprecedented shift that started—publicly at least—five years ago with the announced moratoria on new development in Singapore and Frankfurt. Those regulatory interventions highlighted the challenges the industry faces in securing sufficient power.
Since then, it turned out that data centers would need much more power than had been realized—just at a time when regulators and community organizations were growing increasingly critical of the sector's existing demand.
Our Data Center Research Service estimates that, as of 2024, colocation operators in the top ten data center markets by MW consume about 13 gigawatts (GW) of power.
That's enough power to generate electricity for roughly 10 million homes—or, in this case, only about 1,000 commercial data centers!
Starlink, the satellite broadband provider operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX unit, is making rapid inroads in Latin America.
As of November 2024, Starlink’s services are live in 28 countries/overseas territories in Latin America, with more launches planned for 2025.
Nov 5, 2024
Mobile Monsters: The World’s Biggest Operators
Earlier this year, China Mobile hit one billion mobile subscriptions.
In a country of more than 1.4 billion people, this may not seem like a remarkable milestone. However, the next largest national cellco, Reliance Jio in India, has less than half of this number—around 476 million subscriptions as of mid-2024.
Let’s take a closer look at China Mobile and the other giant operators.
Many of the world’s top data center markets face issues such as rising energy costs, connectivity, and in some cases, moratoriums on new data center buildouts.
To help decision-makers navigate these challenges and prepare for the future, we’ve launched the Market Connectivity Score (MCS), a dynamic tool that measures current and potential connectivity and data center market size for 3,000 cities worldwide.
As of Q4 2024, the MCS ranks Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as the fastest-growing city for near-future connectivity infrastructure growth.
It's 2024. We obviously had to do an AI episode of the pod.
Our IP Networks Research Service—which recently underwent its big annual update—includes an analysis that explores how, what, and where internet backbone providers connect.
Keep reading for a sample of our 2024 provider rankings findings, where we compare different metrics to examine which internet providers have the richest set of connections to other companies.
For our next episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet, we look to the sky.
Our guest is Sal Salamone, Managing Editor of Network Computing magazine. Sal joined me to discuss the emerging market for direct-to-device satellite communications.
The role of business broadband in WAN architecture is evolving. It’s no longer just a backup option—many enterprises now rely on it for core connectivity.
Thanks to the rise of cloud services and SaaS applications, broadband’s flexibility and cost-effectiveness make it a strong contender against legacy services like MPLS and DIA.
We’ve collected data from 170+ countries for our Business Broadband Pricing Database, covering nearly 7,000 broadband plans that range from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps.
Here’s what we found:
Competition between the United States and China continues to be a hot topic.
Take The Economist, which recently published America v China: who controls Asia’s internet?
While this piece did a great job highlighting the impact of geopolitical tensions on telecom infrastructure throughout Asia, my colleague Alan Mauldin and I want to expand on this coverage by offering updated data on two important areas of the story: cloud and cables.
TeleGeography Explains the Internet is back from summer break.
We return a little older, a little wiser, and you can bet that we've done the summer reading. To that end, we're starting this season with a classic TeleGeography Explains deep dive.
The topic? U.S. telecom law!
Telecom is a regulated industry, and U.S. law holds complexities that impact what happens across the larger ecosystem. I have a lot to learn about telecom policy, so thankfully I'm joined in this explainer by Jeff Long, an attorney in private practice with broad experience in both the data center and telecom industry.
Another year, another African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) keynote presentation for Senior Research Manager Patrick Christian.
His 2024 African Network Geography Update explored global network trends, as well as African bandwidth trends, interconnection hub trends, and end-user demand. There was a special focus on Kinshasa, where this year’s AfPIF conference was held.
What are the best-connected hubs in Africa? Where are new and planned submarine cables landing? Is intra-African bandwidth gaining traction?
Oct 10, 2024
Ethernet in the WAN
Carrier-grade Ethernet is a critical piece of today’s enterprise WAN, and carriers continue to expand their network footprints and make higher capacities available.
TeleGeography’s latest Bandwidth Price Report—drawn from our Network Pricing Database—takes a deep dive into Ethernet’s place in the WAN and analyzes recent pricing trends across geographies and capacities, focusing on Ethernet over MPLS (EoMPLS) and Ethernet over DWDM (EoDWDM).
Trends in the IP transit market generally follow regional trends of the transport market.
And while some have suggested that price erosion may slow as a result of recent inflation and supply chain constraints (as it has in the wavelength market), we have not seen this trend make its way into the IP transit market.
Oct 2, 2024
Escaping the Matrix: AI and Submarine Cables
We are now moving from sci-fi to reality with the launch of many AI services that are poised to transform industries and reshape our daily lives.
While data centers are expanding rapidly to support AI requirements, there is less clarity on how AI might impact long-haul network infrastructure, especially submarine cables.
This is exactly what I delved into during my keynote at Submarine Networks World 2024.
Global internet bandwidth rose by 22% in 2024, continuing its slow but steady decline over the past few years. Total international bandwidth now stands at 1,479 Tbps, representing a four-year CAGR of 25%.
Clearly, the pace of growth has been slowing recently. However, it varies across regions.
New IP Networks research tells us that Africa has once again experienced the most rapid growth of international internet bandwidth, growing at a compound annual rate of 41% between 2020 and 2024.
Sylvie LaPerrière, one of TeleGeography's esteemed partners, is a known tech leader in the digital infrastructure community.
You might specifically know of her work as a team lead for Google's subsea cable Equiano along the Western Coast of Africa. Or perhaps you know her as a renowned internet governance advocate and interconnection strategist.
We're so glad to welcome her decades of expertise to TeleGeography's Preferred Partners program. (This network of telecom professionals is like a telecom A-team ready to apply TG data to new and unique research projects. We're thrilled to take on new opportunities with them.)
Sylvie was kind enough to speak with our team about her take on the industry, advocating for women in telecom, and setting up her own consulting shop. Read our conversation below.
Sep 24, 2024
The Man With a Golden Interconnectivity Ranking
Many locations around the world are clamoring to become the next great hub. But before we can identify successful practices to promote digital hubs, we first must decide how to measure that connectivity.
What role do submarine cables play? How about electricity and green power? And government policies ... can those even be quantified?
At Platform Global 2024, TeleGeography VP of Research Tim Stronge took to the stage to tackle these questions.
Verizon’s shock agreement to acquire ISP giant Frontier Communications in a $20 billion all-cash deal looks set to herald a new era of fixed-mobile convergence in the U.S. telecom market.
The takeover—which is expected to close in 18 months, subject to regulatory approval—follows a series of eye-catching fiber-related announcements involving chief rivals AT&T Communications and T-Mobile US.
Today, we take a look at the respective fiber strategies of the “Big Three” U.S. mobile operators.
Sep 12, 2024
5G Potential in Europe
The first commercial 5G mobile networks were launched in Europe in mid-2019. Roughly one year later, most countries’ main mass-market rollouts were already underway.
The technology continues to grow in popularity as network deployments progress. At the end of June 2024, there were an estimated 190 million 5G subscriptions across Europe, up from around 130 million a year earlier.
In European markets where 5G is available, the technology accounts for an average of 27% of all mobile subscriptions.
Sep 5, 2024
Hey, Who’s Using the Bandwidth?
To many people, the concepts of global network infrastructure and bandwidth markets are difficult to grasp. But to those who follow this sector, it's one of the most fundamental building blocks of the global economy.
You’ve likely heard that worldwide bandwidth demand is steadily increasing. A natural follow-up question: why? Who’s generating all of this demand?
Aug 15, 2024
SD-WAN vs MPLS: Battling for Network Dominance
Grab your headphones, we've got a podcast recommendation.
TeleGeography Senior Manager of Enterprise Research Greg Bryan recently visited MEF's Executives at the Edge podcast. He chatted with host and MEF co-founder Pascal Menezes about the evolving landscape of enterprise networking as SD-WAN becomes the norm and SASE gains traction.
Listen in as the pair assesses how MPLS is declining (yet persisting) and why NaaS generates buzz.
As our summer internship session winds down, TeleGeography welcomes summer pricing intern Zar Adisuryo to the blog! Zar just graduated from Georgetown University with a master's in communication, culture, and technology here in Washington, DC.
We had the best time with her intern class in the office; our interns are an asset as we compile large, data-intensive research projects throughout the summer. Today, Zar shares what she's learned about broadband in Africa while on the job.
We'll pass the baton to Zar to tell you the rest. ⬇️
Capacity Europe 2024—happening October 15-17 in London—will once again bring together the global digital infrastructure universe.
And you can bet that TeleGeography's Rob Schult will be on the scene.
You can catch him on Wednesday, October 16, when he'll join a panel to discuss diversity in submarine cable routes.
Jul 23, 2024
The Altnets Spearheading the UK’s Full-Fiber Future
British telecom regulator Ofcom recently published its Connected Nations report for 2023.
The latest findings indicate that 17.1 million premises—or 57% of the United Kingdom—had access to full-fiber fixed broadband as of September 2023. This is an increase of 15 percentage points—or 4.6 million premises—when compared to the same point in 2022.
Jul 10, 2024
6G in Six Years?
In May 2021, TeleGeography reviewed the early stages of development of 6G mobile technology. Three years on, we turn the spotlight back onto the nascent 6G market to see how things are shaping up.
Halfway through 2024, TeleGeography's pricing team has logged lots of frequent flyer miles on the conference circuit. From PTC in January, to Capacity events in March, and ITW later in the spring, we've been collecting as much pricing intel as possible.
As we sift through our notes—specifically our latest ITW findings—we begin to see a clearer picture of what's happening with wavelength pricing around the world.
We've posted submarine cables owned by content providers for nearly a decade. When we first published this list in 2017, we had 20 cables listed. Fast-forward to today, and our list has grown to over 60—a sizable markup.
As cloud adoption becomes increasingly necessary for multinational enterprises, networks are becoming more complex. They now need to connect not just corporate offices to each other, but to various cloud providers at optimal locations.
Jun 17, 2024
We Asked WAN Managers About SD-WAN + SASE
With the release of our new WAN Manager Survey intel, it was only a matter of time before we got to the s-words: SD-WAN and SASE.
Earlier this month, we mentioned both buzzwords in our breakdown of major survey findings. Today I want to spend a little more time with these technologies.
And don't worry, dear readers. There will totally be charts.
Enterprises have embraced hybrid networks.
The expansion of SD-WAN, the benefits of having local internet breakouts for cloud services, and the evolution of network security tools have led more enterprises to employ multiple underlay products.
Mike Constable has logged many hours in digital infrastructure.
He's the mind behind Infra-Analytics Pte Ltd, a strategic consulting and advisory firm. His experience boasts time spent time in leadership and strategic roles, commercial, technical, and project management positions on both the supply and investment side.
With a new normal of hybrid work established, trends in network services are once again changing. But unlike the shifts we saw in 2020, this time trends are fueled by technology and innovation—not huge outside forces like a global pandemic.
May 30, 2024
Where Are All the Internet Exchanges?
If you’re a regular on this blog, you're probably familiar with our submarine cable and cloud infrastructure maps.
But you may not know about the third tool in our interactive map tool belt: the internet exchange map.
May 28, 2024
Why Does Diversity Matter for Submarine Cables?
Last week, I joined Ciena’s Brian Lavallée and Colt’s Laurent Taieb for a live webinar all about submarine cable route diversity and sustainability.
For my part, I covered why diversity matters for submarine cables—a very timely topic in light of recent events around the world.
May 21, 2024
Starlink Expanding in Africa
Starlink, the satellite broadband provider operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is growing its presence in Africa.
As of May 2024, Starlink’s services are live in eight African countries, with more launches planned for the coming months.
Dr. Steve Grubb’s fascination with subsea cable technology began in the 1990s. Thirty years later, now CEO of Grubb Blue Ocean Solutions, Steve spends his time advising cable companies on technical design and vendor selection.
He also lends his expertise as one of TeleGeography's Preferred Partners.
Dr. Hervé Février has an engineer's brain. (His colleagues have actually used the term "technical wizard.")
After four decades in optical communications, he saw that the industry was as exciting as ever, brimming with digital infrastructure problems in need of solutions.
Philip Low, Chairman of Platform Markets Group and Managing Director of Headwinds Consultants, has a lot on his plate at the moment.
The enterprise wide area network (WAN) market is in a state of flux, forcing multinational corporations to rethink how they design and source their networks.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the global mobile subscription total stood at 8.74 billion at the end of 2023, up 2.0% from 8.57 billion a year earlier.
Population penetration rose from 108% to 109% over the same period, boosted by the popularity of multiple SIM ownership in many markets.
Last month saw the conclusion of the long-running mega-merger between Orange España and Grupo MASMOVIL in Spain.
The EUR19 billion ($20.5 billion) tie-up—first agreed back in July 2022—created a new Spanish market leader that presides over a mobile/fixed broadband subscription base of 37 million. Now known as MasOrange, the 50:50 joint venture looks like a force to be reckoned with.
Today, we take a look at the Spanish deals that came into play in the wake of the merger, and see how they could reshape the telecom landscape.
The TeleGeography Submarine Cable Map is our longest-running map project. We started producing submarine cable maps in 1999, and we're still going strong 25 years later.
Just for fun, let’s compare the very first edition—called the Global Communications Cable and Satellite Map—to our 2024 Submarine Cable Map.
Apr 4, 2024
All About Cloud Regions, Zones, and On-Ramps
Today, I'm breaking down three fundamental components of cloud networks.
Apr 3, 2024
The Reality of Latin American Connectivity
A few weeks ago, TeleGeography headed back to São Paulo to participate in the Capacity Latin America 2024 conference.
There were few dull moments, with the Latin American wholesale connectivity market full of activity. Among the many discussion points, a few key themes are worth mentioning.
Let’s have a look.
The geographic coverage of carriers’ enterprise network services varies significantly.
Not every carrier connects to every city in their customers’ networks, and not all services are available everywhere.
When narrowing down the universe of potential suppliers, enterprises must first consider how their geographic requirements overlap a potential service provider’s physical network. They then must determine if the specific data services they require are enabled at each of the service providers’ PoPs.
The WAN Services Coverage analysis—one section of our Cloud and WAN Research—examines carrier network connectivity and service availability from a geographic perspective.
Keep reading for a sneak peek of our latest findings.
Mar 25, 2024
Nigeria: Africa’s Mobile Giant
Nigeria is home to Africa’s biggest mobile market by some distance, with 217.5 million subscriptions at the end of 2023, up from 209.5 million a year earlier.
The next largest African markets at end-2023 were South Africa with 118.9 million subscriptions, and Egypt with 111.1 million, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database.
Mar 21, 2024
This Region Added the Most New Cloud Regions in 2023
Globally, 23 new cloud regions were launched in 2023.
Let’s break that down by region. Which region added the most? And which regions contributed zero?
At TeleGeography, we’ve been working on a project called the Interconnection Index. This tool is designed to answer some questions that we’ve found very difficult to answer and quantify in the past.
What is the next emerging hub in a specific region? How do various hubs compare to each other? Where should I expand in a certain country besides the largest city?
It would be quite challenging to create a one-size-fits-all model that can answer all of these questions appropriately. But we’re still going to try!
We’re going to address this problem with data, and—because we’re geography geeks—maps.
As if three cable faults in the Red Sea weren’t enough of a headache, a series of West African cables were damaged on March 14.
The precise location and cause of all of these faults are not known at this time, but let’s look at what we do know.
Last week, we wrapped up a five-part podcast special that literally explains how the internet works.
This series describes precisely how data moves around the world, covering the basics of internet, transport networks, data centers, the cloud, and WAN along the way.
At the end of each episode, I thought it would be fun to relate what we talked about to a real world example: the lifecycle of a YouTube video.
To paint the full picture, I've compiled each piece of the story here. Keep reading to find out how a video goes from one camera to millions of screens around the world.
Mar 12, 2024
The Data Center Market Blazes a New Trail
When it comes to the nature of exploration, there are typically a number of underlying forces at play, some positive and some negative.
The “pioneering spirit” could be inspired by the excitement of new opportunities, or by the pressure of existing difficulties.
The data center market happens to be dealing with both of those sentiments right now, with several factors driving it to new places.
Mar 7, 2024
What is a WAN?
Welcome back to TeleGeography Explains the Internet. We've reached the finale of our five-part series that makes good on our name, explaining the ins and outs of the internet.
Over the past five weeks, we've endeavored to explain precisely how data moves around the world, covering the basics of internet, transport networks, data centers, and the cloud along the way. Today, we answer the lingering question: What is a WAN?
We recently wrote about how Houthi attacks in the Red Sea are causing headaches for the undersea cable industry.
Since then, the industry has suffered three cable faults in the region.
Feb 29, 2024
What is the Cloud?
Welcome back to our five-part podcast special that seeks to demystify the internet.
Our last episode focused on data centers, but we didn’t discuss what happens inside the rows and rows of servers in those facilities. So today, we're explaining the cloud.
If you've read over our Submarine Cable Frequently Asked Questions, you know that cable faults are common. On average, there are over 100 each year.
Of course, as a society heavily dependent on these cables, we've gotten quite good at repairing them. But what was the repair process like a few decades ago? How were cables fixed in the era of the Walkman? Time for a trip down memory lane.
Feb 22, 2024
What Are Data Centers?
We're back with episode three of our five-part podcast special, which explains the nuts and bolts of the internet.
You've come to the right place if you're interested in understanding how those cat videos travel from the source to your phone.
In episode two, we explained how the internet is made of transport networks to carry data over (mostly) fiber optic wires distributed worldwide. And in the episode before that, we discussed how the internet is a network of networks operated by thousands of mostly private companies.
But we haven’t yet covered exactly how and where those networks meet and exchange traffic with each other and access their destinations. So today, it's data center time.
Feb 15, 2024
What is a Transport Network?
Welcome back to our five-part podcast special that literally explains how the internet you know and love works.
Last week we covered the most basic question: what is the internet?
Today, we tunnel deeper, exploring the physical transport networks behind this seemingly invisible, omnipresent information superhighway.
Feb 14, 2024
Global Pricing Trends in a New Era
At this year’s Pacific Telecommunications Council conference, I spent some time talking through TeleGeography’s latest pricing research findings and tackling the most common questions we've received over the past year.
In case you missed it, here's a recap of my Taylor Swift-themed presentation: Global Pricing Trends in a New Era.
Feb 8, 2024
What is the Internet?
If you've caught TeleGeography's podcast, you'll know that we endeavor to explain the business behind human connection every week. We've chatted about Wi-Fi, WAN, and everything in between.
We've audaciously called our show TeleGeography Explains the Internet, but we've never properly explained how the internet works and how bits get pushed around the globe—until now.
That's right. We decided it was time to, quite literally, explain the internet.
Feb 6, 2024
China: The World’s Biggest 5G Market
With an estimated 750 million active subscriptions at the end of September 2023, China has the world’s largest 5G mobile market by far.
Jan 23, 2024
Wi-Fi 6 Afraid of 7?
On TeleGeography Explains the Internet, we often focus on the long-haul, zeroing in on the network portion of telecoms. Today, with the help of Tiago Rodrigues, President and CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), we’re switching things up a bit.
Drawing upon his vast expertise in Wi-Fi, Tiago steps into the hot seat to outline the key issues in wireless LAN.
The Red Sea is a global hot spot at the moment due to repeated attacks by Yemeni Houthi rebels against commercial shipping vessels.
While this inlet is a strategic location for global shipping, it also plays a vital role in global communications networks.
Many retail service providers, such as mobile operators, MVNOs, and cable broadband providers, rely heavily on wholesale carriers to transport and terminate their customers’ international calls.
Wholesale carriers terminated approximately 257 billion minutes of traffic in 2022, down 5% from 2021. Wholesale traffic declined at an average rate of 1% per year over the past ten years, compared to a -2% CAGR for overall traffic. Wholesale carriers terminated nearly three-fourths (72%) of international traffic in 2022, up from 70% the year before.
Traffic to mobile phones in emerging markets has spurred expansion in wholesalers' share of the overall market. In 2022, wholesale carriers terminated over 87% of traffic to Sub-Saharan Africa and South America. In contrast, wholesale carriers terminated only 56% of traffic to Western Europe.
Wholesale revenues have changed only marginally from ten years ago. But let’s take a moment to look under the hood.
Jan 10, 2024
How Is the Global Network Keeping Up With Demand?
By any measure, the global bandwidth market is thriving. International bandwidth demand has nearly doubled from 2020 to 2022, and has now reached 3.8 Pbps.
Meanwhile, the lit capacity on major submarine cable routes continues to soar, keeping pace with demand.
How? Is the network getting faster?
Not quite. Think bigger highway, not faster cars.
Jan 4, 2024
Where Did the Minutes Go?
The year 2014 represents the peak for international voice traffic. International call minutes declined the following year, for the first time since the Great Depression—and it's been downhill ever since.
Dec 27, 2023
Iliad and Vodafone: More Consolidation in Italy?
French telco group Iliad has submitted a proposal to UK-based Vodafone Group regarding the potential merger of their respective operations in Italy.
If successful, the merger will have a big impact on the Italian mobile market, reducing it from five players to four, while also combining the fixed broadband operations of the two companies.
The deal is by no means guaranteed to go through, however. Even if Vodafone’s response is positive, regulatory authorities must then study its effects on competition.
Dec 18, 2023
Colocation Pricing Trends To Watch
The pressures of supply chain disruptions, electricity price volatility, and government intervention are impacting prices in the global colocation market.
As we continue to move through 2023, here are a couple of trends to keep an eye on.
Dec 11, 2023
Where in the World Is the Largest Data Center Hub?
By our 2023 estimates, the Washington metropolitan area—or more specifically Northern Virginia (NoVA)—dominates as the world's largest data center market.
With more than 22 million square feet of operational capacity, NoVA is 30% larger than the next-biggest data center hub, Tokyo.
What else does the most recent update to our Data Center Research Service tell us?
Dec 4, 2023
The Data Center Industry Faces New Obstacles
Recently, we’ve been closely monitoring the intensifying pressures of insatiable demand and supply constraints in key data center markets.
Supply constraints have come in the form of both short-term and long-term challenges.
In the short term, supply chain disruptions have hindered development timelines. On the long-term side, regulators and utility providers have begun taking a hard look at the data center sector and how to grow it sustainably going forward. In some cases, these entities have severely disrupted development during the interim period.
None of these challenges have been resolved. And as we move through 2023, another major disruptive component has been added to the mix—the accelerated growth of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Nov 30, 2023
Want To Retire in Your 20s? Become a Submarine Cable
Wouldn't it be great to be fully retired before your 30th birthday?
Because they are engineered with a minimum design life of 25 years, it's common for the submarine cables that keep our world connected to experience this luxury.
Let’s talk about why, and what happens to cables after they reach retirement age.
Nov 28, 2023
5G Progress Report: Brazil
Brazil’s multi-band 5G spectrum auction drew to a close in November 2021, generating total commitments of BRL47.2 billion ($8.5 billion).
The auction process attracted bids from a mixture of major players like Telefonica Brasil (Vivo), Claro Brasil, and TIM Brasil, established regional players such as Algar Telecom and Sercomtel, and a number of lesser-known participants.
Two years later, we examine the respective progress of Brazil’s 5G licensees.
Nov 21, 2023
Head in the Cloud, Toes at the Edge
I'm back with a new episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
In the hot seat this time: Nokia's Paul Unbehagen. Paul has a deep history in the networking world, so he approaches his role at Nokia—NE Americas CTO—from the perspective of a network engineer.
Although our main topics this week are enterprise cloud and right-sizing cloud utilization, we use those as a springboard into many topics circling the state of the network in 2023.
Nov 15, 2023
All Change in Ethiopia
Until recently, Ethiopia was one of the few telecom markets in the world that was still a monopoly, with no competition to state-owned firm Ethio Telecom.
Nov 13, 2023
Beware of Deep Fake TeleGeography
The age of generative AI is certainly exciting. The ability to quickly access answers to complex questions is poised to revolutionize the world. However, with great power comes great responsibility.
When using these tools, it’s important to be mindful of some of the risks. Deep fakes are a growing concern for society at large and may have found their way to market research.
As we mentioned earlier this year, when it comes to submarine cable facts, AI may get some stuff right, but not everything.
In fact, you may be wondering, “does this mean there’s no need to subscribe to TeleGeography research anymore?” After all, can’t you just ask your favorite AI tool—whether it’s ChatGPT, Bard, etc.—to provide you with TeleGeography data?
I thought I’d ask Bard to show me some TeleGeography data. Are the results real or deep fakes?
The Latin American Satellite Congress held in Rio de Janeiro at the end of September provided a great opportunity to engage with some of the largest satellite communication companies in the world.
Looking back, there was one common theme that stood out: collaboration.
As we at TeleGeography have noted many times, the vast majority of global connectivity passes through submarine cables. But satellite networks are growing ever more important, both as complements to terrestrial systems and as last resorts for where it is hard (or expensive) to lay fiber.
For enterprises, that means a hybrid Wide Area Network (WAN) combining satellite and terrestrial connectivity is increasingly relevant.
This week on TeleGeography Explains the Internet, we welcome SmartCIC CEO Toby Forman to the show.
Oct 31, 2023
How Geography Influences Network Security
Today’s TeleGeography Explains the Internet guest comes to the security world with a deep background in cloud and networks.
Joe DePalo is Chief Platform Officer at Netskope, and the ideal person to help us understand how and why location matters in network security.
Oct 25, 2023
Do Svidaniya: VEON Exits Russia
Following the sale of its local operations on October 9, 2023, Amsterdam-based multinational telecom group VEON has completed its exit from Russia.
While artificial intelligence (AI) has been the most hyped demand driver in recent years, its impact on international internet capacity is not entirely clear.
A large amount of AI-driven demand is likely to be carried over the private networks of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta. Microsoft's infrastructure is also supporting OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Here are some other factors that will shape how the global internet develops in the coming years.
Oct 17, 2023
How Do Targeted Ads Work? Is My Phone Listening In?
Why am I getting ads for this toothpaste? How could my devices possibly know I'm in the market for a new tube? Did they hear me mutter something about running low? Do they know I jotted it down on our grocery list?
Today on TeleGeography Explains the Internet, we're asking the big questions about mobile advertising.
Oct 12, 2023
Tracking International Internet Traffic by Region
Three years after the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the internet seems to have achieved a state of normalcy.
This can be seen across regions of the world. With the initial rapid traffic growth due to COVID-19 continuing to wane in 2023, many global networks appear to have started to return to more typical rates of utilization.
Let’s look at the numbers.
Oct 11, 2023
Inside Asia’s Increasing Demand for Cloud Expansion
In a recent interview with Asian Telecom, I was asked to shed light on Asia’s prominence in global cloud services. More specifically, why are data centers and cloud services expanding so rapidly in Asia?
As population density increases, there is a natural surge in data consumption, like cloud services. So it makes sense that Asia—home to 60% of the world’s population—has a growing demand for data centers.
But that's not the only catalyst here, and there are numerous advantages to having data centers clustered across Asia.
Oct 10, 2023
Born in the (US)NUA: LIVE from Ohio!
Live from Ohio, it's Tuesday night. We're sneaking in a LIVE episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet this week.
Oct 3, 2023
It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Super Cloud
Tuesday is podcast day here at TeleGeography. This time, we welcome William Collins, the Principal Cloud Architect at Alkira.
If the subject of this blog didn't totally give it away, today's episode is focused on the cloud. I asked William to talk us through the history of enterprise cloud and highlight a few of the more significant issues in enterprise cloud networking today. His answers might surprise you.
Sep 26, 2023
How NaaS Relates to SDN and Automation
The newest member of the TeleGeography Explains the Internet club is telecom industry veteran Mark Daley, Epsilon Telecommunications Director of Digital Strategy and Business Development.
After spending nearly a decade directly involved with SDN and NaaS at Epsilon Telecommunications, Mark is the perfect guest to help me talk through how NaaS is unfolding in the market.
After a tumultuous 2020, in which the COVID-19 pandemic caused internet traffic patterns to shift and volumes to surge, network operators have returned to the business of adding bandwidth and engineering their traffic in a more measured manner.
Sep 19, 2023
The Total Transformation of Latin American Telecom
Luis Fiallo has been in the telecom industry for over 25 years. And for the majority of that time, he has been at China Telecom Americas, witnessing the many changes happening in the Latin American telecom market firsthand.
After years of helping to drive CTA's growth in the region, Luis, now Vice President, has many valuable insights to share with TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
Since this episode primarily focuses on Latin American networks and cloud developments, I invited my colleague Peter Wood, TeleGeography’s Senior Analyst covering Latin America.
We recently surveyed a mixture of carriers and MSPs, SD-WAN vendors, and pure-play security vendors about their network security offerings in order to analyze what these services are and how they are being offered.
In this analysis, we also detail the available pricing models across services.
Here's an excerpt.
Sep 12, 2023
Why Telecom Service Providers Need To Automate
In 2021 and 2022, MEF CTO Pascal Menezes joined us on TeleGeography Explains the Internet to discuss MEF's work on standardizing the enterprise network.
This season, we welcome a new face from the same team, Stan Hubbard, Principal Analyst at MEF. Stan recently authored a State of the Industry Report for MEF; I wanted to have him on to discuss his findings and see where the telecom industry is at with adopting new technologies.
Sep 5, 2023
Are These WAN Sourcing Trends Real or Just Hype?
Season 5 of TeleGeography Explains the Internet is here, and we're kicking things off with Dennis Thankachan, Co-Founder and CEO at Lightyear.
Because Dennis is uniquely positioned to see how enterprises are sourcing networks, I was excited to talk to him about some key WAN trends he has seen recently.
Aug 31, 2023
How Common SASE Products Are Being Offered
Our Cloud and WAN Research Service just unveiled a fourth WAN analysis module, and it's all about network security.
To write this analysis, we asked a mixture of carriers and MSPs, SD-WAN vendors, and pure-play security vendors to tell us about their network security offerings.
Here's a look at what these services are and how they are being offered.
Aug 24, 2023
Eight Enterprise Products, Explained
The geographic coverage of carriers’ enterprise network services varies significantly. Not every carrier connects to every city in their customers’ networks, and not all services are available everywhere.
When narrowing down the universe of potential suppliers, enterprises must first consider how their geographic requirements overlap a potential service provider’s physical network. They then must determine if the specific data services they require are enabled at each of the service providers’ PoPs.
TeleGeography's WAN Services Coverage analysis—part of our Cloud and WAN Research Service—examines carrier network connectivity and service availability from a geographic perspective.
Here's a snippet of that analysis, followed by some handy definitions.
Earlier this month, South African ISP Vumatel announced that its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure now passes two million homes. One million of these homes are in traditionally underserved areas, such as townships.
This network footprint means that Vumatel now presides over a more substantial FTTH network than Telkom South Africa’s Openserve unit.
Fiber ISPs are very much on the rise in South Africa, with multiple players gaining traction with their regional rollouts.
Unusually, the majority of these operators use an open access business model, allowing dozens of smaller companies to market and resell fiber connectivity.
Today, we take a look at the main players driving fiber growth in South Africa.
Cloud services have become a critical component of many enterprises' data management. And how enterprises reach the cloud service providers' data centers has become an important issue.
Traditionally, the plain old internet sufficed. But there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Aug 15, 2023
Target Acquired: e& Sets Its Sights on Europe
United Arab Emirates (UAE) telco e&—formerly known as Etisalat Group—is slowly but surely building a presence in Europe.
In case you missed it, we’re looking back at some previous hypothetical network scenarios to see how the cost of network ownership can change over time.
In last week’s blog, Senior Research Manager Brianna Boudreau explored our first tiered scenario, which takes a conservative approach to integrating internet services and SD-WAN into the WAN.
If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to start there. Brianna’s post also provides important context about our hypothetical network and baseline dual MPLS network.
For Part 2 of this analysis, I'll map out a second, less conservative tiered approach, then switch gears to our Remote Hybrid Network.
Let’s dive in.
Enterprise customers have embraced hybrid networks that employ multiple underlay technologies combined with an SD-WAN overlay. And for good reason.
Many SaaS applications and cloud services have been optimized to work over local internet connections rather than through central internet breakouts. The integration of an SD-WAN overlay addresses many of the concerns about network performance and security that come along with incorporating internet into the WAN.
And as we detailed in our recent blog series, the DIA and broadband services included in these hybrid networks are often cheaper than MPLS–sometimes considerably so. This allows WAN managers to reduce network spend or increase their capacity while staying within the same budget.
But even after enterprise customers have undergone a network transformation, it is still imperative for them to keep tabs on the market and assess what their network should cost. Particularly if their network contract includes a benchmarking clause.
With the latest update of our enterprise port pricing, we looked back at some previous hypothetical network scenarios to see how the cost of network ownership can change over time.
Earlier this month, Brazilian regional ISPs Vero Internet and AmericaNet agreed to merge their respective operations.
Vero currently ranks as the seventh-largest ISP in Brazil; AmericaNet is eleventh. The enlarged entity will jump to fifth place in the fixed broadband market.
The deal seems highly likely to spark further consolidation. Regional fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) players have flourished in recent years, with a number of fast-growing ISPs snapping up operations in and around their regional strongholds.
As of May 2023 (most recent official data), 16 Brazilian ISPs served more than 250,000 subscriptions, suggesting the time is right for a sustained period of M&A activity.
Let’s take a look at the companies that have been driving M&A in Brazil in recent years.
Jul 20, 2023
Content Providers Are Still Hungry for Bandwidth
Earlier this week, I joined Ciena and Telstra for a live webinar highlighting Asia-Pacific market drivers, trends, and new cable builds.
During my session, which focused on Trans-Pacific submarine cable trends, content providers came up quite a bit.
These companies prioritize the need to link their data centers and major interconnection points. As such, they often deploy massive amounts of capacity on core routes.
The Trans-Pacific and Intra-Asia routes are two great examples.
Earlier this month, international telecom group Telefonica entered into its fourth Latin American fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) joint venture (JV).
The deal was sealed in Peru after Telefonica agreed to terms with investment firm KKR and Peruvian telco Entel.
This new fiber-based JV follows earlier agreements in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. Let’s take a closer look at Telefonica’s strategy and examine the scope of the networks in question.
Corporate traffic patterns continue to change. And static, single technology transport networks designed to secure internal corporate communications no longer meet network requirements.
Today they are being replaced by dynamic, hybrid, application-aware networks.
These new WANs are intelligent at the edge. They are able to categorize data and route it over a variety of transport types based on policy or application performance requirements. And they ensure a high-quality, secure experience to users regardless of their physical location, access device, or application location.
One innovation assisting WAN managers in deploying hybrid networks—while also ensuring the security and performance of their network—is SD-WAN.
There are a lot of acronyms used in the telecommunications space, and it can be tough to keep them straight.
Thanks to TeleGeography's new acronym cheatsheet, you don't have to.
Mixing up FTTC, FTTN, and FTTP, for example? NBD, we've got you covered.
In the last few years, Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese equipment suppliers have come under increasing scrutiny due to alleged links with the Beijing government, raising serious security concerns for Western powers.
Following the U.S. government's ban on Chinese 5G technology, China-based vendors now face problems elsewhere.
The European Union (EU) is considering an outright ban of Chinese equipment across Europe’s 5G networks.
Connectivity by satellite is not new, but expanding networks via low earth orbit (LEO) is a recent phenomenon receiving lots of investment.
As interest in LEO connectivity has grown, the number of companies looking to establish themselves in the market has also gone up. However, in recent conversations with satellite industry leaders, we’ve heard speculation that the market may have reached a saturation point.
That means mergers, acquisitions, and market consolidation are likely to occur. In fact, some of that has already begun to unfold.
In sharp contrast to other regions, only a handful of Latin American telecom markets have seen 5G launch activity to date, with notable examples including the likes of Brazil and Chile.
However, a number of eagerly awaited 5G spectrum auctions are expected to take place in the region in the coming months.
Today we take a closer look at the LatAm markets where we can expect to witness 5G auction activity before the end of the year.
Jun 14, 2023
Get Acquainted With Our Cloud Infrastructure Map
If you're not familiar with TeleGeography’s Cloud Infrastructure Map—a free tool that tracks cloud data centers and on-ramps both built and planned—now is a great time to get acquainted.
Why, you ask? When our team updated the Cloud and WAN Research Service for 2023, the Cloud Infrastructure Map also got a refresh.
Keep reading to get the lowdown on our latest version and why you ought to be using it.
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?
Jun 7, 2023
Latin American Pricing Takeaways From ITW
Last month, the TeleGeography team joined scores of ICT infrastructure professionals in National Harbor, Maryland for International Telecommunications Week.
One of the many topics discussed was price erosion in Latin America. The main trend likely comes as no surprise: prices keep falling. But there is nuance to how price erosion is occurring in different markets.
Let’s explore the context in more detail.
Jun 5, 2023
Has Geopolitical Conflict Between China and the U.S. Caused Their Networks to Disconnect?
Let’s talk about geopolitical conflict between China and the U.S. and how it’s affecting the network. Has it caused the two countries to disconnect?
May 18, 2023
Is This the Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race?
At SubOptic 2023, my colleague Tim Stronge and I brought back the Telecom Mythbusters to test a new series of myths. I already covered my first two myths from our presentation: the cable lifespan myth and the 99% myth.
My third and final myth—the exponential growth myth—is based upon a quote that I found: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” –Albert Allen Bartlett
May 10, 2023
Shaw Thing: Canadian Merger Finally a Done Deal
A long-running telecom saga came to an end last month with the conclusion of the C$25 billion ($18.4 billion) merger between Canadian operators Rogers Communications and Shaw Communications.
“Submarine cables account for over 99% of intercontinental data traffic” is regularly quoted in the press with no source given.
It’s time for some fact-checking.
Apr 25, 2023
Surveying the WANscape
This week, Season 4 of TeleGeography Explains the Internet ends on a high note with Junior Research Analyst Mei Harrison’s podcast debut. As one half of our dynamic enterprise duo, Mei is the perfect person to help me talk through results from our recently published WAN Manager Survey.
“The lifespan of a submarine cable is 25 years.” We’ve all heard that, right?
Is this statement really a fact, or is it fiction? Let’s find out.
How are submarine cables impacted by tectonic shifts beneath the seafloor?
This week's guests on TeleGeography Explains the Internet are well-positioned to tell us. They join us from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre: Isobel Yeo, Researcher in Geology and Volcanology, and Michael Clare, Principal Researcher of Ocean BioGeoscience and Marine Environmental Adviser to the International Cable Protection Committee.
Mike and Izzy are geologists specializing in the seafloor, so their research has become vital for the submarine cable community.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Denis O’Brien—the Irish businessman who founded international telecom group Digicel in 2001—could lose up to 90% of the company to U.S.-based investment firms.
These firms are poised to seize control of the business in exchange for writing off up to $1.8 billion of Digicel’s debt.
The revelation that O’Brien could lose his empire follows a tumultuous period for Digicel. Today we take a look at the rise and fall of a Caribbean communications kingpin.
While our interactive submarine cable map is updated on a rolling basis, printed editions are unveiled annually. Each edition has a different theme, and our team always tries to out-do last year’s release.
Can you guess what inspired our latest design?
Apr 11, 2023
Staying a Step Ahead of Mobile Fraudsters
I think this is a milestone. This might be the first episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet where we talk about 6G.
First, let me rewind. Our guest today is Dario Betti, CEO of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum.
The press regularly reports that $10 trillion of financial transactions flow over submarine cables every day. But is this true?
To properly tackle this claim, we need to test two things.
Apr 4, 2023
AI Meets The Corporate Network
Today’s episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet is about artificial intelligence. And for that we welcome Kannan Kothandaraman, Co-Founder and CEO at Selector AI.
Mar 29, 2023
Real Talk: Are WAN Managers Adopting NaaS?
As cloud adoption becomes increasingly necessary for multinational enterprises, backend networks are becoming more complex.
The introduction of X-as-a-Service products and the need for multi-cloud environments have pushed WAN managers to make changes to their current ecosystems and adopt new technologies.
Let's look at how network professionals are integrating the cloud and Networking-as-a-Service (NaaS) into their enterprise networks.
Mar 28, 2023
What Makes a WAN Truly Secure?
I've always known Aryaka Networks as service provider with a different approach to enterprise networks—they don’t neatly fit into categories like facilities-based carrier or managed service provider.
When Aryaka’s Chief Product Officer Renuka Nadkarni agreed to join me on TeleGeography Explains the Internet, I quickly had a list of questions mapped about their place in the WAN landscape.
According to the latest data from TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database Service, as of March 2023, 18 countries in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region are served by commercial 5G services.
This includes eight in the Middle East and 10 in Africa.
Mar 15, 2023
WAN Configurations Are Shifting
Network underlays have been in transition as more enterprises install SD-WAN services and attempt to meet the increase in cloud traffic. Companies are looking to lower costs and increase connectivity while maintaining secure networks.
All of these changes have led to a decrease in MPLS usage, but has the decline in MPLS stalled?
Mar 14, 2023
Confessions of a Telecom Investor
On TeleGeography Explains the Internet, I typically interview guests who work in the telecom industry or manage telecoms at large enterprises.
Not this week!
Meet Aaron Chan, Founder and Managing Partner at Recurve Capital. As an investor in the “technology media and telecom” space—or “TMT” as they say in finance circles—Aaron has something of an outside perspective.
There's a good chance that you first heard about TeleGeography through one of our maps. Research Analyst Lane Burdette was introduced to TeleGeography when she came across our Submarine Cable Map a few years ago.
Now part of the team that creates this resource, Lane is understandably excited about this week's 2023 Submarine Cable Map launch. It seems like the perfect time to welcome her and Designer and Cartographer Larry Lairson to TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
Mar 1, 2023
Disruptions in the Data Center Market
The global data center market is under an unprecedented squeeze as we move into 2023.
On one hand, we have a long-term challenge surrounding the sustainability of the industry’s growth trajectory in essential hub markets. On the other, we have an acute short-term problem with energy prices in the colocation sector.
These issues combine to create an uncomfortable phase in the market right now.
Rohan Singh knew his future was in networking and communication when he saw his first network diagram at around 12 years old. That's probably why he feels like he's been involved in networking for most of his life.
Now Vice President of Client Services at Marlabs, Rohan joined us at TeleGeography Explains the Internet to talk about all that goes into the modern digital transformation.
Feb 16, 2023
The Decline of a U.S.-Centric Global Network
Twenty years ago, the United States was very much at the center of the global internet.
In 2003, 98% of all interregional internet capacity and 42% of all international internet bandwidth was connected to the U.S. despite emerging intraregional capacity in Europe and Asia.
Submarine cables helped to enforce this centrality, and the highest capacity cables were connected to the U.S. Around this time, the U.S. was also among the cheapest places to connect to the internet.
So what’s happened to the U.S.’s role? Is the U.S. becoming less centric to the global network?
Feb 9, 2023
Global Pricing in Uncharted Territory
Historically, the two most predictable trends in the bandwidth market have been consistent demand growth and price erosion. But those trends have been challenged over the past few years.
Recent supply chain issues and geopolitical challenges have dramatically slowed price erosion globally. For the first time, we're asking ourselves, are prices actually increasing?
Feb 7, 2023
The Death of Voice Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
Why has it taken us this long to welcome Senior Research Manager Paul Brodsky—an A+ podcast guest—to TeleGeography Explains the Internet?
I brought Paul on to discuss our most recent voice report, but we couldn’t help getting into a whole lot more.
Jan 31, 2023
Unpacking Telecom Predictions of the Past
It's one thing to make predictions, but it's another to assess how those predictions turned out. One month into 2023, Mattias Fridström, Chief Evangelist at Arelion, kindly agreed to scrutinize his 2022 forecast with us.
Jan 24, 2023
SASE and Secure
This week on TeleGeography Explains the Internet we welcome Jeremiah Ginn, Software Defined Cybersecurity Evangelist at AT&T and author of Diving into SASE.
Back in 2018, the Panamanian government rubber-stamped long-gestating plans to reduce the mobile market from four players to three, seeking to make better use of the country’s spectrum resources.
Despite multiple meetings, no breakthroughs were achieved, and all four operators were unwilling to concede ground.
Five years later, multiple international telecom groups have exited Panama and the authorities find themselves in the unusual position of trying to attract a new operator to fill the void.
Today, we track the key events that led to this point.
Jan 17, 2023
A Brief History of Networking as a Service
This week's guest on TeleGeography Explains the Internet has a deep history in networking.
Khalid Raza was involved in some of the earliest large-scale MPLS deployments. Then, after seeing the limitations of MPLS, he co-founded Viptela–diving head-first into the SD-WAN revolution.
Khalid is now the Founder and CEO of Graphiant, a Silicon Valley-based startup. In this interview, he describes how enterprise networks have changed and why we need an approach beyond MPLS and SD-WAN.
Jan 16, 2023
Understand Secure Access Service Edge
If you've been involved in the WAN/IT infrastructure space for the past few years, you've probably heard about SASE, or Secure Access Service Edge.
The enterprise market is just beginning to integrate this new technology into network security strategy and many professionals are still broadly unfamiliar with it. As a result, it's common for WAN speakers and writers to repeatedly clarify what SASE is (and speculate on whether vendors are “SASE washing”).
In fact, our 2021 WAN Manager Survey found that only one-third of enterprises had adopted either SASE or Zero Trust. And one in ten respondents had never even heard of SASE.
Jan 12, 2023
Shake-up in Hungary as Vodafone Exits
U.K.-based Vodafone Group has agreed to leave the Hungarian telecom market after more than 20 years of competing in the country’s mobile and fixed sectors.
Jan 10, 2023
Protected vs. Unprotected Circuits
You’ve always been told to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Telecommunications professionals have been told the same thing. Perhaps that’s why you’ve heard of “protected” and “unprotected” circuits.
These terms relate to the resilience and redundancy of communication paths.
The TG team is enjoying OpenAI's new ChatGPT—an artificial intelligence assistant trained to answer questions and provide information on a wide range of topics—and our Slack channels show it.
As usual, we can't help talking about telecom, so our analysts have made a game of testing ChatGPT's submarine cable knowledge.
How well has it fared?
You thought we were going to do a major end-of-year review of telecom trends and leave out all things WAN? No, no. Not on our watch.
Host and Senior Manager of Enterprise Research Greg Bryan broke out the data for this bonus New Year's episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
Dec 27, 2022
Feeling '22: A Telecom Year in Review, Part 2
We're looking back at all things telecom in 2022. And we're doing it the best way we know how: rounding up our analysts and inviting them to discuss major findings in their areas of research on TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
If you want to dive in from the very beginning, you can listen to part one over here. And if you're ready for more, keep scrolling.
Part two takes us on a journey through the last 12 months of submarine cable news, SD-WAN, security, and major world events that intersected with telecom infrastructure.
