Submarine Cables

Feb 23, 2024

Flashback Friday: Submarine Cable Repair in the 1980s

If you've read over our Submarine Cable Frequently Asked Questions, you know that cable faults are common. On average, there are over 100 each year.

Of course, as a society heavily dependent on these cables, we've gotten quite good at repairing them. But what was the repair process like a few decades ago? How were cables fixed in the era of the Walkman? Time for a trip down memory lane.

Feb 15, 2024

What is a Transport Network?

Welcome back to our five-part podcast special that literally explains how the internet you know and love works.

Last week we covered the most basic question: what is the internet?

Today, we tunnel deeper, exploring the physical transport networks behind this seemingly invisible, omnipresent information superhighway.

Jan 17, 2024

The Red Sea: A Key Subsea Cable Crossroads Under Siege

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.

Nov 30, 2023

Want To Retire in Your 20s? Become a Submarine Cable

Wouldn't it be great to be fully retired before your 30th birthday?

Because they are engineered with a minimum design life of 25 years, it's common for the submarine cables that keep our world connected to experience this luxury.

Let’s talk about why, and what happens to cables after they reach retirement age.

Jul 20, 2023

Content Providers Are Still Hungry for Bandwidth

Earlier this week, I joined Ciena and Telstra for a live webinar highlighting Asia-Pacific market drivers, trends, and new cable builds.

During my session, which focused on Trans-Pacific submarine cable trends, content providers came up quite a bit.

These companies prioritize the need to link their data centers and major interconnection points. As such, they often deploy massive amounts of capacity on core routes.

The Trans-Pacific and Intra-Asia routes are two great examples.

Jun 7, 2023

Latin American Pricing Takeaways From ITW

Last month, the TeleGeography team joined scores of ICT infrastructure professionals in National Harbor, Maryland for International Telecommunications Week.

One of the many topics discussed was price erosion in Latin America. The main trend likely comes as no surprise: prices keep falling. But there is nuance to how price erosion is occurring in different markets.

Let’s explore the context in more detail.

Jan 4, 2023

AI vs. TeleGeography: The Submarine Cable Showdown

The TG team is enjoying OpenAI's new ChatGPT—an artificial intelligence assistant trained to answer questions and provide information on a wide range of topics—and our Slack channels show it.

As usual, we can't help talking about telecom, so our analysts have made a game of testing ChatGPT's submarine cable knowledge.

How well has it fared?

Dec 15, 2022

Latin American Market Trends: Brazil and Mexico

As telecom analysts, my TeleGeography colleagues and I have been busy attending conferences and gathering market intelligence from many of the most prominent telecom companies around the world.

Recently, our travels took us to São Paulo and Mexico City for the Futurecom and Mexico Connect 2022 conferences.

There’s a lot going on in both the Brazilian and Mexican markets, so let’s recap some of the discussion themes that stood out.

Oct 3, 2022

Gloomy Economic Indicators… Scary Future for the Subsea Cable Industry?

Some pretty ominous headlines have been circulating around the world lately regarding the risk of a global recession and the ongoing threat of inflation.

At TeleGeography, we've received several questions about how these economic indicators could impact the submarine cable industry.

In particular, people are curious to know if slowing economic growth impair international bandwidth demand growth on subsea cables. And will inflation lead to rising international bandwidth prices?

Sep 16, 2022

Trans-Pacific Bandwidth Forecasts and Trends

New presentation alert. Research Analyst Marvin Tan recently joined Ciena and Hawaiki for a webinar highlighting trans-Pacific submarine network opportunities.