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?

TeleGeography’s Submarine Cable Map recently hit a new milestone: depicting over 650 cable systems.

As of February 2025, that’s a whopping 570 in-service systems, with another 81 planned.

The number of cable systems we study is constantly increasing. This is due to massive investment in this infrastructure—both along major routes and to small islands—as well as our ongoing efforts to track global systems in more detail. 

The number of in-service systems is greater now than in any other year within the last two decades.

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.

Feb 17, 2025

The State of the Network: Your 2025 Update on the Telecom Industry

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. 

Feb 12, 2025

From Clickbait to Reality: A Deep Dive Into Global Pricing Trends

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. 

Feb 11, 2025

How Do Wholesale Carriers Fit In the Global Traffic Picture?

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 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.