The Blog

If you've caught TeleGeography's podcast, you'll know that we endeavor to explain the business behind human connection every week. We've chatted about Wi-Fi, WAN, and everything in between. 

We've audaciously called our show TeleGeography Explains the Internet, but we've never properly explained how the internet works and how bits get pushed around the globe—until now.

That's right. We decided it was time to, quite literally, explain the internet.

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Greg Bryan

With an estimated 750 million active subscriptions at the end of September 2023, China has the world’s largest 5G mobile market by far.

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Pete Bell

On TeleGeography Explains the Internet, we often focus on the long-haul, zeroing in on the network portion of telecoms. Today, with the help of Tiago Rodrigues, President and CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), we’re switching things up a bit.

Drawing upon his vast expertise in Wi-Fi, Tiago steps into the hot seat to outline the key issues in wireless LAN.

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Greg Bryan

The Red Sea is a global hot spot at the moment due to repeated attacks by Yemeni Houthi rebels against commercial shipping vessels.

While this inlet is a strategic location for global shipping, it also plays a vital role in global communications networks.

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Alan Mauldin

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 carriers terminated approximately 257 billion minutes of traffic in 2022, down 5% from 2021. Wholesale traffic declined at an average rate of 1% per year over the past ten years, compared to a -2% CAGR for overall traffic. Wholesale carriers terminated nearly three-fourths (72%) of international traffic in 2022, up from 70% the year before.

Traffic to mobile phones in emerging markets has spurred expansion in wholesalers' share of the overall market. In 2022, wholesale carriers terminated over 87% of traffic to Sub-Saharan Africa and South America. In contrast, wholesale carriers terminated only 56% of traffic to Western Europe.

Wholesale revenues have changed only marginally from ten years ago. But let’s take a moment to look under the hood.

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Patrick Christian

By any measure, the global bandwidth market is thriving. International bandwidth demand has nearly doubled from 2020 to 2022, and has now reached 3.8 Pbps.

Meanwhile, the lit capacity on major submarine cable routes continues to soar, keeping pace with demand.

How? Is the network getting faster?

Not quite. Think bigger highway, not faster cars.

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Jon Hjembo

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.

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Paul Brodsky

French telco group Iliad has submitted a proposal to UK-based Vodafone Group regarding the potential merger of their respective operations in Italy.

If successful, the merger will have a big impact on the Italian mobile market, reducing it from five players to four, while also combining the fixed broadband operations of the two companies.

The deal is by no means guaranteed to go through, however. Even if Vodafone’s response is positive, regulatory authorities must then study its effects on competition.

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Pete Bell

The pressures of supply chain disruptions, electricity price volatility, and government intervention are impacting prices in the global colocation market.

As we continue to move through 2023, here are a couple of trends to keep an eye on.

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Jon Hjembo