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.
The international voice market's trajectory is an inexorable downward spiral, and “over-the-top” (OTT) communications services are most certainly the main culprit.
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 4-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.
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?
Investment in new submarine cables has surged in recent years. Despite some fluctuations, new cable investment has averaged over $2 billion per year in the past eight years.
With demand continuing to rise at an exponential rate, the value of new submarine cables entering service from 2024-2026 is forecasted to reach over $10 billion.
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.
If you’ve checked out our International Voice Report, you probably noticed that the data carefully distinguishes between retail and wholesale traffic, and between wholesale and direct traffic.
What's the difference?
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.
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.
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.
