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.
Supply chain constraints and geopolitical challenges dramatically slowed global price erosion over the past few years. But with supply issues in the rearview mirror, delayed systems are finally coming to fruition. And their impact on the market, particularly in terms of price, is starting to be felt.
On several key global routes, price erosion is accelerating as new high-capacity cables enter service. On other routes, where delayed systems are just starting to come into service and geopolitical challenges persist, price erosion is still slow.
However, this is not expected to last much longer.
Capacity demand has been doubling nearly every three years on many routes.
As a result, investment in new submarine cables has surged. In some instances, delays in cable completion, for reasons ranging from geopolitics to supply chain disruptions, have slowed price erosion to single digits.
In others, new supply has created intense price competition.
As always seems to be the case, new projects that take advantage of the latest technology impact price. Wavelength prices overall in 2024 continued their steady decline. Between Q4 2021 and Q4 2024, weighted median 100 Gbps wavelength prices across the key global routes below decreased an average of 11% compounded annually.
How these big new investments are impacting each region varies. The figure below maps out the 100 Gbps wavelength price in the dark blue columns and the CAGR price decline in the red circles.
Price erosion has returned to form on routes with more ample supply as new high-capacity cables enter service.
For example, the U.S.-Latin America route continues to fall briskly, reflecting the imminent launch of Firmina, diverse fiber pair ownership, and upgrades to existing systems.
Between 2021 and 2024, 100 Gbps wavelength prices on Miami-São Paulo decreased 25% compounded annually, to $12,000 monthly. Similarly, Johannesburg-London, which saw a massive influx of new capacity from the launch of Equiano, recorded an annual 15% price drop for 100 Gbps wavelengths over the past three years. In Q4 2024, weighted median 100 Gbps wavelength prices on the core Africa-Europe route were $32,272 monthly.
That’s 5.9 times the price of London-New York, compared to 7.5 times more expensive just three years ago.
On other routes, planned cables are just starting to come to fruition, and geopolitical hurdles remain. As a result, price erosion is still sluggish.
Routes connecting to (and within) Asia are a prime example. Between 2021 and 2024, 100 Gbps prices on Singapore-Tokyo and Marseille-Singapore decreased 6% and 2% annually from 2021 to 2024, respectively.
This is beginning to change, though. With delayed systems starting to enter service at the end of 2024, these routes will receive a substantial amount of new supply and competitors over the next few years, likely setting the stage for increasing price erosion.
Download the new Transport Networks Executive Summary to keep reading our analysis on the state of global network infrastructure.