Submarine Cables

Jul 20, 2022

Expectations for India’s Used International Bandwidth

Here's a headline you might have caught recently.

Our research indicates that India’s used international bandwidth is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 38% between 2021 and 2028. This rate of growth implies international bandwidth demand will increase 10 times over this period.

Jun 30, 2022

New Cables Are Coming to Africa

While used international bandwidth has significantly increased in Africa in recent years, the region has been plagued by submarine cable faults.

Here's a look at eight new cables planned to help reduce the impact of these faults and increase supply.

Apr 5, 2022

How Global Events Impact the Internet

We've discussed the ways in which the WAN is moving away from private networks and MPLS in favor of reliance on the public internet. Not to mention the costs and benefits of that evolution.

Although it's certainly always been the case that WAN managers must stay on top of internet performance and outages, this is increasingly crucial in the internet-first WAN era in which we find ourselves.

Oct 19, 2021

Who Really Cares About Latency?

Specifically, which applications and network operators have latency on their minds?

Well, content providers, gaming companies, financial enterprises, and cloud service providers, to name a few.

TeleGeography Senior Analyst Paul Brodsky recently joined experts from Ciena and Angola Cables for an hour-long discussion centered around Connecting to Africa with Low-Latency Services.

May 17, 2021

Submarine Cables: It's Not Bitcoin

We often say that we'll be taking a "deep dive" into an issue at the beginning of our podcasts. Today we almost mean that literally, as Greg welcomes TeleGeography Research Director Alan Mauldin to talk about submarine cables.

Mar 19, 2020

You've Read About Recent Cable Breaks. Now Read About the Repairs.

You may have been scrolling through our blogs about recent cable breaks. Or perhaps there's been an uptick in cable fault chatter online. Either way, disruptions to service have made their way into a few spring headlines.

But it's worth remembering that where there have been faults, there have also been repairs.

Feb 11, 2020

About That PLCN Delay: Four Trans-Pacific Cable Market Facts to Consider

There's been a lot of press about delayed approval for the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) cable, which is due to connect Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Philippines to the United States.

You can understand why this cable has gotten extra attention. Backers include Google, Facebook, and Pacific Light Data Communication (PLDC), which is owned by Chinese ISP Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Group.  

While the whole system is awaiting approval from U.S. authorities, Google and Facebook have requested that the FCC allow activation of the Taiwan and Philippines portions of the cable.

Oct 3, 2019

Signals of Success: What to Look for in Submarine Cable Press Releases

I'm a cynic and you can be one, too!

This was the title of Tim Stronge's presentation during a recent webinar we did with our friends at Ciena.

Our favorite neighborhood cynic came bearing an important public service announcement for webinar attendees: just because you see a flashy slide deck or press release about a new submarine cable doesn't mean it's going to happen.

Apr 5, 2019

Are All These New Undersea Cables Really Giving Us Faster Internet? Not Exactly.

How many times have we heard that new undersea cables will bring consumers Internet speeds faster than a speeding bullet? (Like this or this or this.)

It has been reported that new cables promise speeds up to 10 million times faster than traditional home cable modems.

But here’s the kicker: there is no increased speed to be found in these submarine cable systems.

Oct 4, 2018

Is a Mass Extinction of Submarine Cables Looming?

The rapid pace of demand growth is only going to require more international bandwidth in the coming years. While there's certainly lots of investment in new systems, cables built in the late 1990s and early 2000s continue to play a key role in global connectivity. But are their days numbered?  

It seems more likely than ever that some of these cables will soon become "extinct" as they are retired from service.