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.
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.
Our newly updated Global Bandwidth Research Service shows that the global bandwidth market is still experiencing massive demand growth.
Between 2019 and 2021 alone, international bandwidth used by global networks doubled to reach nearly 2,900 Tbps.
So, who's driving all this demand growth for international capacity?
If you find yourself questioning the difference between traffic and bandwidth, here's an analogy that will help.
It's likely that you've read the news by now. Google is teaming up with Telecom Italia Sparkle and others to build and operate two submarine cable systems linking the Middle East with southern Europe and India.
The Blue cable will connect Italy, France, Greece, Israel and go terrestrially to Jordan; while the Raman cable will connect Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman, and India. Combined, they will form a major new high-capacity route linking Europe and India.
Another day, another cable announcement involving a major content provider?
Yes and no.
The global outbreak of COVID-19—and its associated economic and social impact—has upended the way billions of people live their lives.
Has it had an impact on international calling?
The global outbreak of COVID-19 and its associated economic and social impact has laid bare the crucial, irreplaceable role that the internet plays in our daily lives.
Starting in March 2020, internet traffic patterns shifted and volumes surged as students around the world learned from home, adults worked from home, and everybody did at least something from home.
To its enormous credit, the internet bent but—for the most part—did not break as network operators scrambled to deal with the swell in traffic.
The global outbreak of COVID-19—and its associated economic impact—has amplified the role played by the international telecommunications industry and the bandwidth market that underpins it. The global bandwidth market has always been marked by change and uncertainty, and the current crisis is just an extreme example of this.
You might have heard about a recent cable cut near Mauritania.
The short version? On March 30, damage to the ACE cable disrupted internet service to connected countries, with reported problems occurring over the next several days. The Dyn blog reported that “of the countries listed as having landing points for the ACE Submarine Cable, 10 had significant disruptions evident in Oracle’s Internet Intelligence data.”
According to NASA, light travels at a constant, finite speed of 186,000 mi/sec.
So the speed of light never changes. End of blog post, right?
Wrong.
