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?
It’s been a year since the U.S. government denied a cable license to the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), setting off a chain reaction that's disrupted the trans-Pacific submarine cable market.
We've said it before and we'll say it again. When it comes to the global bandwidth market, the two most predictable trends are persistent demand growth and price erosion.
But if the latest update of our Global Bandwidth Research Service teaches us anything, it's that there's more beneath the surface.
We often say that we'll be taking a "deep dive" into an issue at the beginning of our WAN Manager Podcasts. Today we almost mean that literally, as Greg welcomes TeleGeography Research Director Alan Mauldin to talk about submarine cables.
Readers of our Pricing Suite's latest Bandwidth Pricing Report already know that the Middle East serves as both an important node and a crucial transitway for international capacity.
Cable operators were extremely busy between 2011 and 2017 when they turned up nine new cables in the region. But submarine cable activity slowed quite a bit between 2018 and 2020, as no new cables were launched in the region.
The network faced a host of new demands and challenges in 2020, but many of the key trends that characterized the wholesale market prior to the pandemic held true.
Demand growth remains robust. And while the pace of price erosion moderated in many markets over the past year, prices still continued to decline.
With the annual update of our Global Bandwidth Research Service comes new insights for 2021.
Here's the big news: between 2018 and 2020 alone, international bandwidth used by global networks more than doubled to exceed 2,000 Tbps.
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