Hold on, let me quickly grab my crystal ball.
Okay. Now that I've got that, let's see what it says about the future of the global internet. (And let's all agree that by "crystal ball" I mean "notes from our 2021 Global Internet Geography update.")
Now that internet backbone operators have adapted their networks to accommodate changes in traffic flows, they've resumed a more measured approach to capacity planning and network upgrades in 2021.
That means that price trends have resumed their downward trajectory and regional characteristics accordingly.
Guess what? We upgraded our Interactive Submarine Cable Map.
Your favorite cable resource—currently sponsored by HMN Tech—now depicts a huge 487 global cables and 1,304 unique landing stations. Even better, we layered in new functionality to search and select multiple cables, landing points, countries, RFS years, and suppliers.
We've been reading up on the myriad of cable updates that have been making headlines this summer. So it's no shock that our August list of reading recs leads off with news about Facebook's latest undersea investments, including their involvement in the recently-announced Apricot project.
It's likely that you've read the news by now. Google is teaming up with Telecom Italia Sparkle and others to build and operate two submarine cable systems linking the Middle East with southern Europe and India.
The Blue cable will connect Italy, France, Greece, Israel and go terrestrially to Jordan; while the Raman cable will connect Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman, and India. Combined, they will form a major new high-capacity route linking Europe and India.
Another day, another cable announcement involving a major content provider?
Yes and no.
Here's the long and short of it: Africa leads the globe in international bandwidth growth. (You can read more of our sublime global bandwidth findings over here.)
With a lightning-fast growth rate and eight new cables in the works, this is an emerging market with network infrastructure projects to watch. So when it comes to bandwidth in Africa, we have a lot to talk about.
We wanted to pop by and share a few summer stories that our team has been reading lately.
We suggest you start with the Foreign Policy number we linked below. This piece prods at the geography of digitalization—more specifically, the "systemic vulnerabilities across public and private networks and dangerous weaknesses in supply chains."
Have you seen an $8 billion figure floating around the internet over the last week? Specifically that we could see $8 billion in new cable investments over the next three years?
It's true—and you can explore our 2021 submarine cable map to see what that's about.
Today seems like a good day to unveil our 2021 Submarine Cable Map, don't you agree?
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