Submarine Cables

May 15, 2025

Building Tomorrow’s Internet: A 2025 Update on Cable Investment

A steady stream of investment has driven tremendous growth in subsea cable infrastructure to keep pace with ever-increasing bandwidth demand.

According to new data from TeleGeography’s Transport Networks Research Service, the aggregate cost of new construction over the past nine years has averaged over $2 billion annually.

Let's review the state of submarine cable investment in 2025.

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 in 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 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.

Jan 22, 2025

The Impact of AI on Submarine Cable Networks

Submarine networks enable uninterrupted connectivity among geographically dispersed physical data centers, effectively forming a global data center without walls.

Substantial investments driving the swift growth of AI infrastructure in both existing and new data centers are set to significantly influence data center interconnect (DCI) networks, which are essential for the success of AI applications and use cases.

Research Director Alan Mauldin recently joined Ciena’s Brian Lavallée for a live webinar exploring these technical and strategic drivers transforming the AI landscape.

Nov 21, 2024

What To Know About Submarine Cable Breaks

Earlier this week, operators of two communications cables—C-Lion 1 and BCS East-West Interlink—reported faults in the Baltic Sea.

Local internet service seems largely unaffected, but a swirl of sabotage allegations have emerged in the global press.

Without making a ruling on any ongoing investigations, let’s look at the facts.

Oct 2, 2024

Escaping the Matrix: AI and Submarine Cables

We are now moving from sci-fi to reality with the launch of many AI services that are poised to transform industries and reshape our daily lives.

While data centers are expanding rapidly to support AI requirements, there is less clarity on how AI might impact long-haul network infrastructure, especially submarine cables.

This is exactly what I delved into during my keynote at Submarine Networks World 2024.