The Blog

If you're a regular here on the TeleGeography blog, you've likely noticed that we round out each month with a list of telecom reading recommendations.

This month, we have more of a watching recommendation. That's because the recording of Research Director Alan Mauldin’s Namex Annual Meeting 2023 presentation—focused on Italy's Role in Global Network Expansion—is now available.

Alan first sets the stage with a breakdown of international bandwidth demand growth by region. Between 2018 and 2022, Europe grew at a compounded annual rate of about 41%.

This number implies that every two years, there is a complete doubling of all the bandwidth that links the countries within Europe, and other countries into Europe.

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Kristin Lee

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.

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Pete Bell

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.

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Peter Wood

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. 

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Tom Leins

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.

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Patrick Christian

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?

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Tim Stronge

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.

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Peter Wood

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?

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Tim Stronge

TeleGeography’s Submarine Cable Map recently hit a new milestone: depicting over 550 cable systems.

As of June 2023, that’s a whopping 485 in-service systems, with another 70 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.

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

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Lane Burdette