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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
TeleGeography started producing submarine cable maps in 1999, but we had been mapping the world of telecommunications for years before that.
Our first map was completed in 1996. This effort depicted several in-service cables. It also shows FLAG as a proposed cable, which is pretty neat.
Way back in 1998, a press release went out from Global Crossing about the first segment of their transatlantic fiber-optic cable.
"Global Crossing announced today that it has begun transmitting voice and data communication through Atlantic Crossing (AC-1)," read the release, touting the cable's state-of-the-art system. This segment will double the total capacity in service across the Atlantic Ocean! Full city-to-city connectivity! A link between Europe and the U.S.!
Did you catch what's so interesting about that language?
How does one go about keeping track of nearly 400 submarine cable systems and over 1,000 landing stations?
Carefully, with lots of precise, year-round tracking, as it turns out.
In today's post, we're sharing secrets from our mapmakers about how our submarine cable map designs come together.
We get lots of questions about submarine cables.
Where are they? Who owns them? What happens when they break?
Today I wanted to tackle a few topics that come from investors who are eyeing the submarine cable market. We get plenty of questions about demand growth, the state of the market, and capacity price trends. To that I say: here are three things any investor should know about the submarine cable market.
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