Internet

Apr 3, 2025

One Patent to Rule Them All? Demystifying China’s “Terrifying” Cable-Cutting Tech

My family has probably watched Lord of the Rings a dozen times or more1. We can (and sometimes will) quote entire passages from the films.

Apr 2, 2025

Bandwidth Demand is Strong Latin America, But It's Slowing

It's true. The localization of content, applications, and compute in local hubs like São Paulo—paired with submarine cable delays, network buildout logistics, and the simple fact that bandwidth demand can't keep doubling—has slowed bandwidth demand in Latin America.

Mar 20, 2025

New on the Pod: Lightyear Considers the State of Connectivity

We're pumped to have Dennis Thankachan, Co-Founder and CEO of Lightyear, back on TeleGeography Explains the Internet.

Last time Dennis joined us on the show, we dug into Lightyear's approach to creating a digital telecom lifecycle automation platform for enterprise networks.

This time, we discuss their State of Connectivity Report, which dovetails nicely with many of the issues we research here at TeleGeography. (Perhaps this read is a perfect companion to our State of the Network? A match made in heaven, etc.)

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 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 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.

Feb 3, 2025

Is It Sabotage? Unraveling the Mystery of Undersea Cable Breaks

Lately, I've been thinking about the movie director Alfred Hitchcock. One of his first big hits was a 1936 film called Sabotage.

Jan 28, 2025

An Alternative To Aerial and Underground Fiber, or Just a Pipe Dream?

Our team always talks about the fiber-optic cables running across the ocean. But what about running fiber through… water pipes?

Here are the top headlines circulating in TeleGeography’s Slack channels lately.

Jan 6, 2025

The Fastest-Growing Cities for Data Center Connectivity (As of Q1 2025)

In November, we unveiled our new Market Connectivity Score (MCS) and dropped our first public rankings of the top ten most connected and fastest-growing cities in the world.

Because we update the MCS quarterly, it's time to see how those rankings have changed.